LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 





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UNITED STATES OF AJSIEKICA. 

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1 



GOD IN CREATION 



AND IN 



WORSHIP. 



PART FIRST. 



THE ANSWER OF HISTORY 

TO 

HERBERT SPENCER'S THEORIES OE THE 

EVOLUTION OF ECCLESIASTICAL 

INSTITUTIONS, 



BY y 



A CLERGYMAN 



c 



SECOND EDITION, * 



NEW YORK : 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 AND 3 Bible House. 
1887. 

All Rights Reserved, 



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Copyright, 188T, 
BY THE AUTHOR, 



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Washington 



God in Ceeation and in Woeship '* is really an answer to 
assertions made by Herbert Spencer in his * Ecclesiastical Insti- 
tutions,' a book which contains some of Spencer's most ques- 
tionable statements. The titles of the author's chapters are : 
Christianity not evolved from Ghosts and Hero-Worship, God in 
Creation and in Worship, Legends about God and Creation, 
Legends about Satan and Evil Spirits, Deluge Legends, and 
Deification. With ample knowledge of the subject, and large 
citations from its literature, the author overthrows Spencer's false 
use of isolated facts, and traces the primitive belief of mankind, 
showing with Ewald that ' the simple is first, the complex and 
multiform later.' It is scholarly and able, and need not remain 
anonymous." — The Xew York Evangelist. 

The Church Press says : '* * God in Creation and in Worship ' is a 
very timely and valuable publication. We hasten to commend it 
to our readers. In a clear and concise manner it fully meets 
some serious difficulties which intelligent readers now find in the 
science of the day against our holy religion. It is a brief yet 
pretty thorough treatment of an important part of Assyriology. 
If anything can, these Bricks from Babylon can pulverize Bible 
difficulties arising from a godless theory of evolution of religion. 
Let those who thought Bible evidences exhausted, read these 
echoes of three and four thousand years ago. He cannot do so 
without his sympathies being aroused, his mind improved, his 
faith confirmed. In a short compass the author has brought in 
view a large amount of most useful information, and we are sure 
his effort will be highly appreciated." 

A Presbyterian clergyman who went carefully over the first 
edition says: '* It is a clear, strong answer to Mr. Spencer's 
V Ecclesiastical Institutions.' Each point is well buttressed with 
authorities, so that we see the weapons with which Mr. Spencer 
is overthrown and chased from his sapping and mining of the 
very foundations of Christianity." 

A Keverend Doctor prominent in the Episcopal Church of New 
York City says : ' ' I have read this little book through, and can 
hardly overstate my favorable impression of it. In style and tone 
it is throughout worthy of its great theme ; and its substantial 
matter is that of genuine historical learning, intelligently and 
clearly put, and so strongly massed as to be impregnable." 

Another says : " The author turns the arguments of Mr. Spencer 
upon him, and shows that ancient history, instead of favoring his 



theories, really disproves them, while it illustrates and confirms 
the truth of a Divine Revelation to mankind." 

A review by the Rev. Robert Court, D.D.: ** The title placed 
above is that of a book of one hundred and twenty pages, now 
lying before us, ' by a clergyman,' published at New York. There 
is no other clew. Nor can we even guess who ' the author ' is. 
But his theme is * to show that the early historic peoples be- 
lieved in One God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and 
of all things visible and invisible.' There is nothing harsh in the 
style or handling of the work. Herbert Spencer is the opponent 
selected ; his theory of the origin of theism is disputed ; and his 
assumptions and misstatements are plainly exposed. The treatment 
of the subject is popular rather than severely scientific ; but the 
author shows his acquaintance with the recent literature of the 
questions discussed, quoting and frequently referring to such 
writers as Spencer, Max Mliller, George Smith, Rawlinson, Ken- 
rick, Lenormant, Principal Dawson, Sayce, Sir G. Wilkinson, 
Records of the Past, the Vedic Hymns, etc. We believe that 
he has proved, in opposition to Spencer, that mind, intellect, 
not a blind, evolutional energy, originated the present arrange- 
ments of matter in the universe ; that the Jehovah of the Hebrews 
was not one among many gods, but the only true God ; that the 
primitive belief was monotheism ; that ghost-worship is not a 
universal nor primitive practice ; that the Christian religion is 
unique in all its main features, and that the resemblances in other 
cults to Christianity tend to confirm — not confound^ — the faith of 
Christendom. There is a good deal packed into small space, and 
those who lack leisure for perusing great volumes will find 
materials in this very readable little book to give an answer to 
modern gainsayers of the Christian system." 

The Church Becord says : * * This is an interesting and popular 
expression of the witnesses from history to prove that belief in 
* One God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things 
visible and invisible ' is not the result of evolution of religion, 
but is the foundation delivered by God Himself, imbedded in 
human nature, of all belief. It is a timely little book when the 
minds of so many are being led astray by the barefaced asser- 
tions and specious logic of Spencer and his followers. If the tes- 
timony of history has any value, if the resurrected records of As- 
syria and Babylon have any meaning, if the story as told in all 
ancient history be evidence at all, then the fact stands clear that 
belief in One God antedated worship of many gods, and if so, 
then the plea that religion is merely superstition falls to the 
earth as worthless. This evidence from history and archaeological 
research the writer has brought together and presented in most 
interesting form. To any thinking mind, especially of the young, 
it will be as fascinating as a book of adventure. The test is crucial, 
and the attestation complete. We understand that this is but the 
first part of a larger plan of apologetic and expository writing. 
We sincerely hope the plan may be carried out, and commend the 
book as one to be placed generally in the hands of all — especially 
of our youth — who are athirst for truth." ^ 



PEEFAOE. 

The author aims to show that the early historic 
peoples believed in ^' One God Almighty^ Maker of 
heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible ;" 
that their records and traditions indicate belief that 
matter and spirit, good and bad, were from God. 

Somehow in feeling after Him mankind learned to 
worship Him ; before they adored any lesser beings they 
adored Him, now with prayer and sacrifice, now in the 
open sky and in public assemblies, now in temples con- 
secrated to Him ; and the heavenly bodies became sym- 
bols of Him. There w^as sequence in all this, but no 
evolution without intelligence. The method is chiefly 
synthetical, based upon established facts of ancient 
history. It is considered unanswerable. The worship 
of Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Nimrod, Melchisedec, 
Jetliro, Moses, cannot be explained, except by Divine 
instruction to mankind. The brick inscriptions of 
Babylon and Nineveh and the records of old Egypt are 
found to corroborate the narratives in Genesis and 
Exodus. A voice is now heard from those countries, 
which for twenty centuries had been silent. Being 
vocal, its utterances demand consideration. Hence 
some of those recorded utterances have been compared 
with the Pentateuch and v/ith Mr. Spencer's '' Ecclesi- 
astical Institutions,'' for the j)urpose of showing the 
primitive belief of mankind, and that no theory of de- 
velopment or law of evolution or science of nature ade- 
quately explains that ancient belief and worship. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 

I. CHRISTIANITY NOT EVOLVED FBOM GHOSTS AND 

HEEO- WORSHIP. 

SUMMARY : Evolution Dispeoved by Egyptian Histoey. — 
Remains of Temples Oldee than oe Tombs. — Babil. — Tomb of 
Cyeus. — Of Napoleon I. — Egyptian Gods not Deified Men. 
— Peesian Altaes Centueies befoee Persian Temples. — The 
Deuids and C^sae. — Peesian Iconoclasts. — Buening the 
Dead. — Jehovah has no Peee oe Paeallel. — Hebeew Re- 
ligion Peepaeatoey. — Its End Deteemined. — Isaiah and Di- 
vine Insteuction. — Abeaham, Chedoelaomee, Melchisedec, 
Jetheo. — Feom the Simple to the Complex. — Peevalence of 
Religious Feeling. — Temple of Nimeod, but no Tomb. — 
Ancient Facts Withstand Modeen Ceiticism. — Me. Spencer 
Misquotes a Peophet and Miseepeesents Hebeew Theology. 
— Moses and Samuel. — Balaam and the Neceomancees. — 
Peactices not Peesceibed by Moses. — Peepaeation foe the 
Coming One. — Attila vs. Evolution. — Taetae Customs. — Con- 
clusion. 



II. GOD IN CREATION AND IN WORSHIP. 

SUMMARY : Science cannot Explain Natuee, only Phenomema. 
— "A Carpenter-Like Theory." — Man's Limitations. — Skill 
AND Intelligence. — Within Historic Times no New Products 
of Nature. — Necessity of a Ceeatoe. — Ceeation and Con- 
sequence. — Matter does not Change Itself. — Like from 
Like. — Protoplasm Considered. — Science cannot Explain 
Protoplastic Life.-- A Creator Necessary. — The Mind a 
Real Entity. — The Ghost Theory Unhistorical. — Cain and 
Abel. — Belief of Mankind. — Plea of St. Athanagoras {note). 



VI CONTENTS. 

— Antheopomoephic Eeeoes. — Me. Bueeoughs and Talley- 
eand's Jest. — Views of Ceeation, of Sabbath and Woeship in 
Egypt and Babylon. — Embalming a Consequence, not the 
Cause of Belief. — Egyptian Knowledge of God. — Ritual of 
THE Dead. — God in Babylonia. — Saints' Calendae. — Sabbaths. 
— Polytheism a Development. — ASupeeme God the Peimaey 
Belief. — Temples foe Woeship befoee Sepulchees. — Re- 
ligion PuEE AT FiEST. — The Yedic Gods. — Reltgious Teachees 
Refoemees. — China Oeiginally Monotheistic. — Confucius. — 
Mencius. — Testimony of Missionaeies. — Peimitive Belief and 
Woeship. — Noah's Saceifice in Chaldean Recoeds. — Jesus 
Cheist not a Hebeew Ghost.— Keplee's Peayee. — Asceip- 
TioN OF Psalmist and Apostle. 



III. LEGENDS ABOUT GOD AND CREATION. 

SUMMARY: The Egyptian **Nuk Pu Nuk." — Insceiption on 
Temple of Sais. — Oldest Legend in Liteeatuee. — Amun and 
Maut. — Zeus. — Accadian Legends, Age and Chajractee, — 
Peized by Assyeians. — Seventh Ceeation Tablet. — Ceeative 
Gods. — Fifth Tablet. — Bel and Hea. — Ceeation of Man. — 
His Insteuction and his Punishment. — Diffeeence of Genesis 
AND THE Beicks. — RiG Veda. — The Self God Atman. — Deluge 
IN Genesis and Chaldea. — Hebeew Peophets Guaedians and 
Weitees of Sceiptuee. — Chaldean Deity Blesses and Cueses 
Newly Ceeated Man. — Teee of Life. — Cheeubim and the 
Seepent. — Sin of Zu. — Pestilence. — Cutha Legend of De- 

STEUCTION, also THE HiNDUS. — MYTHOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF CeE- 
ATION. AeATUS. PeOVIDENCE. — BABYLONIAN ThEOEIES. FlEST 

Ceeation Tablet. — Fifth Ceeation Tablet. — The Seventh 
Day a Holy Day. — One Supeeme God in India. — Polytheism 
Latee. — Max Mullee, Plato, Aeistotle, Aeatus, Vedic Poet. 
— View of Ethnic Affinity. — Evidential Value of Legends. 
— Theie Lessons. — God Immutable. 



IV. LEGENDS ABOUT SATAN AND EVIL SPIRITS. 

SUMMARY : Geneeal Belief in. — Satan in Babylonia. — Rebel 
Angels Shouting Blasphemies. — Theie Leadee Deagon, Tia- 



CONTENTS. vii 

MAT OE TyPHO, ever A MiS CHIEF-MAKER. — HoRUS DEFEATS HIM. 

— His Evil Doings, how Regarded. — His Emblems, his Wor- 
ship, Plutarch's Testimont. — Graphically Represented in 
Chaldean Records. — Seduces 1000 Angels in Heaven and 
Fights against Bel, who Destroys him with a Blazing 
Thunderbolt. — Spirits op Evil Survive this Defeat ; Ex- 
pelled FROM Heaven. — Ahriman and Demiurgus.— Fallen 
Spirits on Earth. — Spirits op Heaven Invoked against them. 
— AccADiAN Poem on the Seven. — 600 Spirits op Earth In- 
voked. — Jesus Alone Taught their Overthrow. — Origen's 
Hope op their Repentance and Restoration. — The Infernal 
Regions Taught as Explicitly as the Abode of Happiness for 
Just Men. 

CONCLUSION. 



.♦, 



monotheism of PHCENICIANS. — LENORMANT S TESTIMONY. — IDEAS OP 

heaven* 



I. 



CHRISTIANITY NOT EVOLVED FROM 
GHOSTS AND HERO-WORSHIP. 

They shall be ashamed who serve a graven image, who boast 
themselves in idols ; worship Him, all ye gods. For Thou, Jehovah, 
art most high above all the earth ; greatly hast Thou been exalted 
above all gods. Say ye among the gentiles, Jehovah reigneth ; 
fear before Him all the earth. (Ps. 97 : 7, 9 ; 96 : 9, 10.) Thou 
shalt have no other gods before Me : thou shalt not bow down to 
them, nor serve them. . . . Thou shalt break down their images. 
(Ex. 20 : 3, 5 ; 23, 24.) '* Jehovah was originally one God among 
many ! With the Hebrews, as with the Egyptians and numer- 
ous other peoples, a god simply meant a powerful being. 
Abraham was a demigod to whom prayers were addressed. The 
god of Israel was clearly a local god. The command in Ex. 20 : 3 
did not imply that there were no other gods, but that the Israel- 
ites were not to recognize their authority !" (Herbert Spencer, 
" Ecclesiastical Institutions," pp. 696, 697.) 

There is in Mr. Spencer's book on *' Ecclesiastical 
Institutions" just that which makes one, who does not 
scrutinize his reasonings, tremble, like Eli of old time, 
for the Ark of God. He masses together so many facts 
and inferences, so many names and nationalities, with 
such a sweep of history and ethnology, as almost to in- 
timidate one. But he makes many serious omissions. 

Since he quotes Mr. Kenrick's '^ Ancient Egypt,'' 
I refer him to page 295 of vol. i., where that author 
says : '^ There is nothing in history or in the monu- 
1* 



10 GOD IN CREATION. 

ments which indicates that the gods of Egypt were 
really deified men.'' Again, at page 65, of vol. ii. : 
*' In the history of Diodorus we perceive two changes 
which had taken place since the time of Herodotus, who 
represents the gods of Egypt as wholly distinct from 
men. But in the interval between Herodotus and Di- 
odorus the opinion had sprung up among the Greeks 
that the gods had been illustrious chiefs and warriors, 
inventors and improvers of the arts and sciences, raised 
to the rank of divinity through the admiration and 
gratitude of mankind." From this later view Mr. 
Spencer has evolved his theory ; but it is a view much 
too recent ; a theory without adequate support. We 
must go back one or two thousand years before Herod- 
otus and before Moses. Says Colonel Rawlinson v^ 
*' All the kings whose monuments are found in ancient 
Chaldea used the same language, professed the same 
religion, and followed the same traditions ; temples 
built in the earliest times receive the veneration of suc- 
cessive generations, and were repaired and adorned by 
a long series of monarchs, even down to the time of the 
Semite Xabonidus," five hundred years before Di- 
odorus. 

1. Now every reader knows that a historic statement 
may be true, yet very false inferences may be drawn 
from it. This, I venture to suggest, is the case with 
Mr. Spencer. He is too precipitate with his inferences 
and assumptions. He is also historically wrong in say- 
ing that belief in ghosts and the worship of them were 
before belief in God — One Supreme Creator of all beside 
— and the worship of Him. For the remains of tem- 
ples in Babylonia are earlier by one to two thousand 

■'■ ■ ■■ ■'■■ ' ...III I I.I — —— . — ■ ■■ 11 ■ 11 I 11 ■ ■ I ■■! ■ ■ I ._ ■ I II 1^1— — ■ — ■■ _ I. ^ 

Ad Herodotus/' vol. i., p. 352. 



GOD ijsr creation; 11 

years than the remains of tombs ; while in Assyria there 
are no remains of any tombs of an early date — at least, 
so far as yet known. Hence tombs could not have been 
the models of early temples in Babylonia and Assyria. 
Not one has yet been found to answer this claim. 

Confessedly the temple Babil was the most ancient 
of any erected on the Euphrates ; yet it was erected by 
the first great Babylonian hero during his lifetime. 
The remains of that temple were reconstructed by Neb- 
uchadnezzar into another on the same spot to that mon- 
arch' s god. Cyrus the Great may have seen this tem- 
ple, and have worshipped in it ; its architecture may 
have suggested that of his own tomb at Pasargadao ; 
but no man of repute, out of Persia, where they had no 
temples till about five centuries before our era, will pre- 
tend that that tomb, or any like it, was earlier than the 
first known temple. Just as well might coming genera- 
tions affirm that Napoleon I. was a distinguished bishop, 
because at Paris, his capital or see city, his tomb is the 
chief attraction in a large church, having a gorgeous 
altar in it. Ebrard ascribes to Nimrod the character 
of a true worshipjDcr of Jahveh, and the building of a 
temple to Him. Also C Smith's Chaldean Account. 

2. Perhaps this same illustration may suggest the true 
answer to the complex state of religious ideas and of 
worship which w^e find among early Semitic and Hamit- 
ic peoples. Study of the heavenly bodies, especially 
the sun and moon, lord of day and queen of night, led 
them to think of them as gods, or as representing the 
G ood Being. So Egyptians came to regard the Nile, to 
whose overflowing waters, indeed, they owed the j)ro- 
duce of the soil. From the source of earthly good in 
sun or stream, parent or hero, it became easy and nat- 
ural to proceed further, lower or higher, and to regard 



12 GOD IN CREATION, 

each sucli benefactor as god for tliem. It were easy so 
to infer, and it is easy so to assume. But, as Mr. Ken- 
rick says, " there is nothing in history or in the monu- 
ments which indicates that the gods of Egypt were 
really deified men.'' For back of them there were ideas 
and usages which cannot be so explained. There are 
qualities and properties originally ascribed to II or Ilou 
and to Ra which cannot be so accounted for ; much 
less the El or Elohim of Israel and the Jah or Jehovah 
of the Hebrew Covenant. The embalming of the bodies 
of Egyptian dead, placing them at table on festal occa- 
sions, and the affectionate regard which they ever cher- 
ished for their deceased kindred, is conclusive evidence 
that they had no terrors about their ghosts troubling 
them again. And even their kings were to undergo the 
judgment of Amenti after death ; which shows that 
they were not then deified. It is certain that Egyptians 
did not evolve their divinities from heroes, nor their 
worship from ghostly fears. 

3. It will hardly be pretended that the fire- worship- 
ping Asiatics and those who burnt the bodies of their 
dead derived their ideas and practices from the same 
origin, and developed them in the same way, as the Baby- 
lonians, Egyptians, and Peruvians ! Surely a fire-altar 
in the open air, with or without a ministering priest, 
among a people who had no burial rites, no urns, no 
sepulchres, is not likely to have been evolved from a 
grave mound ! At any rate, the minds of many edu- 
cated men can see no logical connection in the evolution 
of ghost-worship and of fire-worship ; between the rites 
of Greeks and Hindus ; they are not to be accounted 
for upon the same hypothesis. What ancient graves re- 
main, what old temple memorials exist to perpetuate 
the religiousness of self-immolating devotees of India .^ 



GOD IN CREATION, 13 

And the same may be said of the Parsees. Indeed^ there 
are myriads of facts to be accounted for, and groujos of 
peoples to be named, whose religious ideas and practices 
are independent of any connection with graye, ghost, 
or hero, yet whose religiousness is as manifest as that 
of any Christian nation. Mr. Spencer is, therefore, too 
narrow in his history and too sweeping in his inferences 
to stand against these peoples, whose religious feeling or 
sentiment, if not God-given, must be explained in some 
other way than by mummy- case, burial mound, depart- 
ed friend, or national benefactor. 

4. The old Druids of Gaul and Briton, who made 
temples of forests and shrines of caverns ; who taught 
that there was an eternal life for man, seem not to be 
in the line of Mr. Spencer's evolutionary theory ; for 
long ages before they were visited by Julius Caesar, be- 
fore their first known hero had appeared, when they 
cremated their dead, together with all they had loved 
in life, Gauls and Britons had used their groves for tem- 
ples, and worshipped the Divine Being in deep recesses 
of the earth. It was a worship before the building of a 
grave mound, and in God-made temples. Clearly, their 
reverence for the mysterious Being wliom they feared 
and adored was not derived from their worship of an- 
cestors, to whom they did not pray. It is ^' not his- 
toric'' to mix up the Norsemen of later times with 
ancient Gauls and tlieir cousins of ancient Britain. 
Caesar's Commentaries are the highest authority we 
have, or can have, for the religious rites and teachings 
of the Druids ; yet I fail to find Mr. Spencer once re- 
f erring to him in "' Ecclesiastical Institutions." * 

Moreover, the Persians and others, numbering many 

* See '' De Bello Gallico," 1. 5, cap. 12 and 13 ; 1. 6, cap. 13-19. 



14 GOD IN CREATION. 

millions of Asiatics of the great Aryan family, had a 
priesthood without a temple, altars without a victim for 
centuries, and heroes without a grave mound. They 
had the simplest form of burial and commemorative 
rites. The believers in Ormazd believed not in ghosts — 
at leasts in no Spencerian sense. Indeed, the ancient and 
pure Zoroastrians and the primitive Hindus^ with many 
millions of Buddhists^ have yet to be accounted for by 
Mr. Spencer. 

5. Nor does his attempted exjjlanation explain the 
iconoclasts of history^ from the golden calves which 
Moses broke to the Egyptian idols which Cambyses 
broke^ and the intolerant monotheism of Mahomet and 
his followers. Herodotus tells us how the son of the 
Great Cyrus treated Egyptian mummies ; how he entered 
royal sepulchres, tore oif the wrappings of the embalmed, 
and offered nameless indignities to the dead. Not con- 
tent with this^ he demolished the statues and images of 
the gods, and defied their power to injure him. Ac- 
cording to Plutarch, he slew the living Apis outright, 
and gave his flesh to the dogs. He also burned several 
dolatrous temples. Other Persian kings pursued a sim- 
lar course of religious persecution, and while conquer- 
ng the country, they punished ]3olytheists for their 
dolatry. The great Darius, illustrious for his organiz- 
ng ability, is said to have summoned the Callatian Ind- 
ans before him, and inquired of them for what con- 
sideration they would agree to burn the bodies of their 
parents — which they were accustomed to eat ; but with 
a loud outcry they begged him not to shock their ears 
with such horrid proposals. They could eat the dead 
corpses, but could not consent to burn them,* like 

* See Kenrick's '' Egypt," vol. ii., pp. 394, 395. 



GOD IN CBEATION. 15 

Britons and Gauls, Persians and Hindus. Late ac- 
counts show that the Indians of Sitka burn the bodies 
of their dead — New York Times, September 20th, 1886. 
From such illustrations of national customs we see that 
the groups of facts which Mr. Spencer gives us may 
be paralleled with other groups of equally striking 
facts, which necessitate different conclusions and infer- 
ences ; all showing the very general prevalence of belief 
in a Supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe ; and 
that belief in Him and the practice of His worship can- 
not be evolved from hero or from ancestor worship, nor 
from any burial rites or propitiation of ghosts. Thus 
teaches universal mankind in the earliest ages. 

6. Mr. Spencer errs in attempting to parallel the 
covenant religion of the Hebrews with that of other na- 
tions. There was, there is, no parallel between them, 
unless we admit a divine origination common to all. 
If we allow that the Egyptian Ra also symbolizes the 
Hebrew Jah, and the Babylonian and Assyrian II or 
Ilou symbolizes the Hebrew El or Elohim, then w^e may 
admit a parallel and agreement to that extent ; but even 
so, there is no further resemblance. The Hebrew cove- 
nant-Jehovah, as revealed to prophets and understood 
by Christians, has no parallel, none like Him, among 
any pagan nation. He is the ever-living God of an 
eternal covenant, Supreme over all, and worshipped by 
all in heaven above and on the earth. He covenants, 
stipulates, enters into an agreement with His people ; 
is jealous of His honor and His throne, and will not 
tolerate another in His place ; He expels all usurpers 
and intruders. While He blesses the loyal and faithful 
nation with the good things of earth, with abundant 
harvests, springing wells, fruitful vineyards and olive- 
trees. He also declares that His anger shall destroy the 



16 



GOD m CREATION, 



rebellious and apostate (Deut. 6). Assuredly we find 
nothing of this in Sabaeism, in naturalism, or in hero 
and ancestor worship after deification ; but we do find 
an approach to it in the blessing of Ann upon those 
saved from the Deluge, as recorded in Chaldean bricks. 
7. But what is more and worse for the evolution 
theory of religion, is that the Hebrew religion was said 
in advance to have its period of termination predeter- 
mined. It was to prepare for another, which should 
supersede it. Abraham, Moses, warning prophets, John 
Baptist himself — all were to be merged in Jesus Christ. 
They only prepared the way for Him. Now, in Baby- 
lon, Egypt, Greece, Mexico, the old world and the new — 
nowhere do we find any parallel to this — prophets and 
priests of a religion who declared that they only pre- 
pared the way for another! Then in a higher and 
better sense than any Greek thought of his Zeus, the 
Hebrew covenant-God became our Father in Jesus 
Christ. How immensely elevated, too, was and is that 
Fatherhood above pagan ideas of the Deity ; above Ea, 
Bel, or Zeus ; above the thoughts of Hindus, Zulus, 
Samoan or Peruvian ! Our explanation is simple and 
rational. We assume that Heaven inspired the writer 
of the first Accadian Liturgy to form prayers to One 
Supreme Being, prayers for the Seventh-day Sabbath, 
and to appoint special sacrifices for that day. We may 
identify the gazelle and the deer of Chaldean bricks 
with ^'the roebuck and the hart'' of Deuteronomy 

Certainly the prophet Isaiah, in 28 : 23-29, teaches 
that God doth instruct man how to cultivate the ground, 
and how to gather the harvest, and how to prepare it 
for food. Nor need we restrict such tuition to Israel- 
ites. Indeed, the early Christian Fathers acknowledged 



GOD IN CREATION, 17 

the pagan oracles to have been inspired.* And instead 
of wondering at such acknowledgment, we may rather 
wonder that all similar evidences of Divine instruction 
are not also acknowledged ; that God inspired ancient 
Accadians as well as Moses. Thus Genesis (6 : 3), '' My 
Spirit shall not always strive with man," teaches that 
God^s Spirit liad theretofore been striving with Him. 
In Genesis 9 : 9-17, the renewed covenant was between 
Elohim and saved mankind. Not until those saved 
from the Deluge had corrupted their way upon earth was 
Abraham chosen to be the head of a new nation which 
should j^reserve the Divine knowledge in the world. 

8. Here belongs one of the memorable episodes of 
history (Gen. 14), which relates the expedition of the 
most famous warrior after jSTimrod — viz. : Chedorlaomer, 
or the '' Ravager of the West.'^ His name is found 
among the brick inscriptions and in Egypt, regarded as 
historical by such scholars as Ewald and Sir H. Eawlin- 
son. But a peace-loving shepherd, rescuing his relative 
and serving his friends, put an end to his career. Three 
other kings from the southern Euphrates, led by Ched- 
orlaomer, had subdued five kings of Palestine, and 
made them pay tribute. In the thirteenth year after- 
ward they rebelled, and declined to make the payment. 
Whereupon Chedorlaomer and his allies marched against 
them, routed the two rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
seized all their goods and provisions, and captured Lot 
and his goods, and departed. Abraham was then 
sojourning at Mamre, was told of the capture of his 
nephew, and at once armed his trusty servants, three 
hundred and eighteen in number, and pursued the 

* Thus Euseb., *' Praep, Ev.," books v. and vi. ; Clem. Alex., 
''Strom.," V. ; Theodoret, *' Therap. Sam.," x. ; Augustine, '* De 
Divin. Da3mon," op. vi., p. 370, etc. 



18 GOD IN CREATION. 

marauders. He soon came up with them, attacked 
them at midnight, utterly routed them^ recovered the 
stolen goods and persons^, also Lot with his goods. It 
was a speedy and decisive victory. Chedorlaomer was 
not heard of again. This very opportune and friendly 
achievement elicited gratitude from all concerned ; and 
among those thus benefited was Melchisedec, the priest- 
king of Salem, later on called Jebus and Jerusalem, 
who reappears in sacred history. He seems to officiate 
at the public thanksgiving held by the tribes who were 
delivered from this foreign domination. 

Such are the facts of this much-mystified inci- 
dent. At this thanksgiving of the tribes, Abraham 
gave a tenth of the spoils to Melchisedec, and received 
his priestly blessing. It was an acknowledgment of 
each other's position and of each other's God ; for the 
priest-king and the patriarch-warrior worshipped the 
same Supreme Being. They both alike stand for the 
true and the spiritual amid so much that was false and 
corrupting in that age. It was prior to the birth of 
Isaac, and the completion of the Divine covenant 
through him. Wherefore, then, was the King of 
Salem a worshipper of the Most High God, while the 
neighboring kings in Canaan were corrupt and de- 
generate ? The question suggests the answer : Because 
the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim 
had degenerated from the original and pure worship of 
God in that land. They were evolutioning backward, 
from the true to the false ; while Melchisedec remained 
faithful to the truth which he had received.* Genesis 

* See Oehler's '' Old Testament Theology," pp. 59-63 ; Sir J. W. 
Dawson's "Fossil Man," '' The Unity of Nature," ch. 12, and 
*^ Primeval Man, " by the Duke of Argyll, and J. H. A. Ebrard's 
** Apologetics," vol. ii., ed. 1887. 



GOD m CREATION. 19 

L 

presents questions for solution which the advocates of 
evolution in religion cannot answer. 

9. A similar illustration we have in the tribe of the 
father-in-law of Moses. It is demonstrable from the 
narrative in Exodus, ch. 18, that he was the chief and 
priest of the Midianites, descended from Abraham, who 
for four hundred years had preserved the true knowl- 
edge and worship of God. The forty years' sojourn 
with this family gave Moses ample opportunity for 
learning the real character of the religion of Zipporah's 
father. Moreover, on bringing his daughter to Moses 
in the wilderness near the mount of God, he took a 
burnt-offering and sacrifices for God, and Aaron, with 
the elders of Israel, joined with him in the worship. 
Moses himself accepted the excellent advice and sugges- 
tions which he offered (verses 12-24). Here was a right 
beginning of the true without the false, yet very soon 
after this we find the false mingled with it, and largely 
prevailing ; for the Midianites became degenerate in 
worship and theology and corrupters of Israel. Like 
the tribe of whom Melchisedec was the priest-king, 
these descendants of Abraham lapsed into wrong ways, 
and evolutioned into a debasing polytheism. 

The instances of Gain and Abel, Seth and Enoch, 
Noah and Nimrod, Abraham and Melchisedec, Jethro 
and Moses, show, despite any aggregation of other facts 
or fancies, that the religious feeling in man was a Di- 
vine gift, and that Divine worship was the outcome of 
Divine instruction to mankind. Very early men were 
taught how to honor their Creator, as well as how to 
care for their physical necessities. At first there was 
personal instruction to all, then the tuition of chosen 
patriarchs, then the dispensation of Moses and the 
prophets, then the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The evolii- 



20 GOD IN CREATION, 

tion of religion was from tlie simple to the complex : 
first Divine tuition, leading to public assemblies for 
worship and sacrifice to Jehovah in temple^ in taber- 
nacle, at holy places ; the word and vision to patriarchs 
and prophets ; the precepts and laws of Sinai ; detailed 
observances of ritual ; the speaking oracle ; prophetic 
messages, now to honored individuals, now to anointed 
kings, now to distant nations, until we have the full 
manifestation of God's Fatherhood in His Son Jesus 
Christ. But whether in the simple or the complex, all 
nations in early times felt after and found Him whom 
they adored as God. Everywhere is a whisper, an echo, 
or a trumpet note of Elohim Jehovah — thus saith the 
Lord. Paganized Christianity or baptized paganism 
cannot affect the evidences of revealed religion. It is 
only the God-inspired part of any modes of worship 
that is of God. That men have deified heroes or wor- 
shipped ghosts does not disprove, much less explain, 
why others of larger intelligence have accepted a Reve- 
lation claiming to have been given of God their Creator. 
Yet simple as is this matter, Mr. Spencer infers that, 
because there is and has been much of what may be 
called spurious in religion — much nature- worship, there- 
fore all religion is equally human. He also ignores the 
difference between the Old Covenant with the Hebrews 
and the New Covenant in Jesns Christ. 

10. Nor can I see why what he calls the religious 
idea or sentiment can be more or less true, because of 
its prevalence or its non-universality ! When, indeed, 
was the highest truth or any ethical principle accepted 
by the vast majority of mankind ? Surely not in the 
days of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of Elijah, of our 
Lord, nor of reformers in later times. Yet, explain it 
as we may, most men and women possess a tendency 



GOD IN CREATION, 21 

to or aptness for religion. By far the major portion of 
families and of nations have the religious feeling. 
Whether innate, imparted, or acquired, it grows and 
matures in most men with their religious culture. The 
feeling is widely felt, and it unfolds itself like a culti- 
vated flower, emitting perfume all around. But be- 
cause there is no perfume here or there only proves that 
there are no fragrant flowers there ; not that flowers 
never existed. So the universality or non-universality of 
religion, or of the religious feeling, does not prove that 
it must be universal in order to be true. It is true ab- 
solutely, whether perceived or suppressed, and is a Di- 
vine gift to man. Any exceptions in prehistoric or later 
times, among antediluvians, Canaanites, among the 
Wedda, the Dor, the Bongo, a Greek, a Eoman, or a 
Saxon sceptic, among deaf and dumb, the ignorant or 
the educated, does not and cannot account for the ad- 
mitted fact that almost all mankind are, and have been, 
monothcists or polytheists. AVhether a birth endow- 
ment or an acquisition, the vast majority of the human 
race possess and manifest the religious feeliug. It was 
this which induced Nimrod and his associates and de- 
pendents to erect the Temple Babil as unlike a grave 
mound as possible. It was this which prompted Neb- 
uchadnezzar to re'pair, or reconstruct and beautify, that 
temple, consecrating it to the god he worshipped. The 
ruins of that temple still remain, and challenge explora- 
tion ; but where and what was the tomb of Nimrod ? 
Let Mr. Spencer explain the erection of the Temple 
Babil, before the death and deification of Nimrod, upon 
the principle of evolution ! So of the tomb of Shal- 
maneser L, of Tig-lath-pileser I., of Nebuchadnezzar 
himself, whose temple yet remains, but not his tomb. 
Nay, is there anywhere to be found an old ziggurat 



22 GOD IN CEEATION. 

tomb like the old ziggurat temples, and equally an- 
cient ? What great hero was there before Nimrod, who 
had been worshipped and a temple built to his honor, 
whom Nimrod and his admirers could copy when they 
erected Babil ? Clearly there is nothing in Kevelation 
which makes such large demands on faith and credulity 
as that grave mounds and grave temples were the orig- 
inals which subsequently developed into temples of wor- 
ship to the One Supreme God ! Tenfold easier were it 
to believe that God inspired the writer of the first 
Accadian Liturgy, and taught early Egyptian priests 
the Oneness and Eternity of His Being, and then in- 
spired Moses to write out Divine precepts and laws for 
the covenanted people of Israel, in order to perpetuate 
His worship and make known His will to mankind. 
Such is Kevelation. Even the Church may have erred 
in dogmatic limitations. 

11. Again, the Church's belief in God, and definition 
of His attributes, and possible misrepresentation of His 
character, does not change the Divine Being. Indeed, 
our worship of Him, or of what we worship as God, may 
vary according to our culture, our climate, our national 
or ethnic requirements, provided only that we cherish 
and truly express the religious feeling. Nor does our 
belief or disbelief in a future life and in the immor- 
tality of the soul change in the least degree the stupen- 
dous fact of endless being for man. This, though al- 
most a truism in theology, seems to be ignored in 
'^ Ecclesiastical Institutions/^ 

Because some men are born deaf and dumb, or some 
are ignorant of the very thought of God, or some cari- 
cature His worship, or some deny His existence, or some 
think that life here and now is the only life for them, 
this is no reason why all men should be deaf and dumb, 



GOB IN CREATION, 23 

or ignorant and unbelieving. Hence section 583 makes 
no more against the reasons for belief in God, supreme 
over all, than it makes against the use of sugar, because 
manv tribes of men have not learned to extract it from 
their sugar-yielding plants ; or against salt, because 
American Indians did not know its use, when first 
visited by Europeans. Whether in some sense "' re- 
ligious ideas" are not of supernatural origin cannot dis- 
prove revealed religion, nor show that Hebrew prophets 
are of the same class as Fakirs or Druids. The Aztecs 
of the new world, like Semites of the old, worshipped a 
Supreme God. Indeed, there is that in man which leads 
up to God, in the contemplation of His works. Thus 
the Apostle (Kom. 1 : 20, 21) teaches that even the 
everlasting power and deity of the Creator may be 
known from His works ; that knowing Him, men should 
also worship and glorify Him as God. Beyond that we 
may not go — God as our Creator, God our Saviour, God 
our Father. Even the oldest Babylonian records tell 
us of a creative Deity, whose Providence governed crea- 
tion, and who set lesser gods, or laws, in the sky for the 
preservation of the revolving orbs around us.* Now, 
to evoke that guidance and preservation and to insure 
the favor of that Providence is the object of Divine 
worship, the very purpose of the religious feeling. And 
we find it among the earliest historic peoples, even in 
the so-called legendary ages. It is before the beginning 
of our author's ^* Ecclesiastical Institutions." 

12. Mr. Spencer does not buttress his theory by cit- 
ing, as in section 584, "' groups of facts and inferences 
from the aborigines of Victoria !" Were they about 
the aborigines of the valley of the Nile or the Euphrates, 

* See *' Becords of the Past/' vol. ix., pp. 117, 118. 



24 GOB m CREATION, 

tliey might be of service ; nnforttinately for him, how- 
ever, the ancient inhabitants of those shores testify 
against him, and the medicine men and funeral rites of 
Victoria are far too recent to be helpful. They can 
throw no light on our Lord's words, when He says : All 
that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son 
of Man, and shall come forth ; thy liTotlier shall rise 
again.* It is a direct and personal affirmation which 
no ghost fear or ghost worship could have evolved. The 
dead in their graves were to hear the voice of Jesus ; 
but not in order to quiet them, but to mcike tliem come 
forth ! which is in the teeth of all ghost propitiation. 
Compare section 590 : "" You come to me for the pur- 
pose of killing me. It is clear that you were a bad fel- 
low when you were a man ; you are still a bad fellow 
under ground !*' This is quoted from Bishop Colla- 
way's account of the Zulus, from an interlocution of 
one living with the spirit of his dead brother. But 
how, in the name of Anu, can it explain the early wor- 
ship of that Babylonian Deity ? What book of modern 
travels can shed new light on the raising of Lazarus? 
Clearly, we must discriminate between inference and 
history ; between what may have originated we know 
not how nor where and the indisputable teachings of the 
Bible. A God-given Revelation cannot be overturned 
by any rites of the Malagasy, or the last words of Soc- 
rates with his disciples, or the burial scene of a Roman, 
or the self-immolation of a Hindoo, the incantations of 
an African or of an American Indian. While all these 
differ in thought and expression, they arise from a com- 
mon subjective feeling, which is voiced in various ob- 
jective religious rites and symbols. 

* St. John 5 : 28, 29 ; 11 : 23-26. 



GOD IN CREATION. 25 

Hence, as lawyers say, we may enter a demurrer to 
Mr. Spencer^s book, confident that even admission of 
his groups of facts can do believers no harm ; for if they 
account for certain ideas and sentiments of various tribes 
of men, they neither explain nor explain away a Reve- 
lation from God to the most ancient peoples, to He- 
brews nor to Christians. Divine worship and eterual 
life remain for us, in spite of Mr. Spencer's ^' Ecclesi- 
astical Institutions.'' 

13. I have thus far treated Mr. Spencer's book with 
the respect due to an author v/iio occupies so high a 
place in the republic of letters ; but when in section 
587 he treats of theology proper, and of the Divine 
names of the God of the Hebrews, I am amazed, if not 
indignant, that any man of learning should offer such 
critical rubbish for the consideration of fellow-scholars. 
In his charge against the warlike character of the clergy 
during many ages, Mr. Spencer accuses the prophet 
Micaiah (p. 762) with advising King Ahab to go to 
war with Jehoshaphat against Syria. It is a gross per- 
version of the text in 1 Kings 22 : 15-28, which de- 
clares that Ahab will surely be defeated if he ventures 
on that war. After such misrepresentation, we need 
not be surprised at his misquoting other Scripture. 
Witness this statement: ''Under the common title 
Eloliim, were comprehended distinguished living per- 
sons, ordinary ghosts, superior ghosts, or gods— that 
is to say, with the Hebrews, as with the Egyptians and 
numerous other peoples, a god simply meant a power- 
ful being, existing visibly or invisibly. ... II or El 
among the Hebrews was applied to heroes and also to 
the gods of the gentiles." Therefore, he would have 
his reader infer that there was no superiority between 
Jahveh and Ra, or Ann, Zeus, and others. Now, this 
2 



26 GOD IN CREATION, 

does not come within the range of our demurrer ; we 
deny its truth as a general statement. It was not the 
custom of the Hebrews to speak of their living or dead 
heroes as gods, though spelled with a small g. The 
Bible does not so speak of Abraham, of Moses, of 
Joshua, of the Judges that followed him, or of David 
and any subsequent King of Israel, or of Judah. Of 
course, when a Hebrew speaks of the deities of other 
nations, he uses the one name by which such deities 
were to be known, or even compared or contrasted with 
the God of Israel. Thus in Ex. 15 : 11 Moses asks, 
Who is like unto Thee, Lord, among the gods? 
Certainly He had triumphed over the gods of Egypt. 
Indeed, he had in the Decalogue expressly forbidden 
Israel to worship any other god.* What other word or 
name could be used in such prohibition ? not idol, not 
creator, not bestower of the good things of earth. Then 
to the praise of Jacob we read. There was no strange god 
with him (Deut. 32 : 12). Again we read that the 
Shechemites entered into the hold or fortress of the 
house of the god Berith (Judges 9 : 46),. The Psalmist 
would not stretch out his hands to any strange god 
(44 : 20). Nay, he would extol Him by His name Jah 
(68 : 4), and rejoice before Him. 

Thus we might proceed with illustrations of Hebrew 
usage. El was the common name for Deity. But Jere- 
miah is authority for saying that the gods that have 
not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from 
the earth and from under these heavens (10 : 11). 
The prophet Daniel contains instances of the Hebrew 
and of the Babylonian use of the name for Deity. And 
Elohim is used by Satan when tempting Eve (Gen. 

* Ex. 20 : 3 ; 34 : 14. 



GOD IN CREATION, 27 

3 : 5). But generally it is the plural of excellence and 
majesty ; Elohim is the Creative God ; to be worshipped, 
to be obeyed, to be loved, to be honored and revered. 
He defends, preserves, leads forth, fights for, encamps 
around, and does all those anthropomorphic acts which 
a paternal God may be supposed to do for a devout and 
dependent people. Precisely that which a child of God 
wants to believe of God, Mr. Spencer regards as deroga- 
tory to Him ! Assuredly no Hebrew nor Christian ever 
thinks of the Divine Being whom he reverences as he 
thinks and speaks of pagan divinities, or as he thinks 
and speaks of living or dead heroes, not excepting the 
royalists' use of the phrase " Our Lord, the King ;'' or 
the Churchman's, ^' Et. Eev. Father in God;" or the 
Komanist's climax, '' Our Lord God, the Pope !" 

It is unwarranted assumption for any one to make that 
a believer in inspiration ever thinks that Elohim is 
used of the god Baal in the same sense as it is applied 
to Jehovah ; or that the god of Ekron and the god Nis- 
roch, the god Chemosh and the god Milcom, the god 
Nebo and the god Bel, the god Moloch and the god 
Dagon, were, in fact, gods at all."* N'ay, was it not the 
terrible irony of the prophet, in his withering contrast 
of BaaPs impotency with the all-powerful Jehovah, that 
goaded the idolaters to cut their flesh in agony and 
chagrin, as well as liturgic frenzy, because that Baal 
failed to manifest himself just when such manifestation 
was most necessary ? Elijah's mockery of those deluded 
suppliants is an everlasting answer to Mr. Spencer's as- 
sumption : " Cry aloud ; for he is a god ; either he is 
talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey ; per- 
adventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened !" This 

* See Deuteronomy, chaps. 4, 5 ; also 10 : 17. 



28 GOB IN CREATION, 

ever proved to Israel, as it does to Christendom, that 
God alone was God. See the beautiful narrative of the 
little maid and Naaman in 2 Kings 5. Pagan deities 
were in no sense the Elohim whom the Hebrews adored. 
He only was the acknowledged Creator, the God of 
Israel, God of patriarchs and prophets ; by whose cove- 
nant name Jehoyah they were blessed ; to whom they 
solemnly promised their allegiance ; in whose favor they 
lived and died. To bow to any other god in worship, 
to acknowledge his power or sovereignty, to invoke his 
aid for any purpose whatsoever, this was to incur Je- 
hovah's displeasure and the chastisement of an adverse 
Providence. It was ecclesiastical rebellion and ecclesi- 
astical apostasy ; it reduced the Hebrews under the 
domination of other nations, now of Philistines and 
Syrians, now of Egyptians and Assyrians, now of Baby- 
lonians and Eomans. The reason and memory of man- 
kind must be eliminated before Elohim-Jehovah can 
be evolved from any pagan deities. He is God of gods, 
Lord of lords, a great God, mighty and terrible (Deut. 
10 : 17). He is exclusiye of all gods of the heathen, and 
even their names were not to be mentioned ; Israelites 
must not swear by them, nor serve them, nor bow them- 
selves unto them (Josh. 23 : 7). Indeed, all other gods 
and worship must be forsaken and put away, and Jeho- 
vah alone served and obeyed (Josh. 24 : 14-27). A 
stone of witness was set up in Shechem by the sanc- 
tuary of Jehovah, that Israel had chosen Him to the 
exclusion of all divinities of other nations. The whole 
passage is conclusive that all other deities and all other 
worship were forbidden and renounced. It is, however, 
clear that Israel often and again sank into idolatry. 
Hence the warnings and denunciations of the prophets. 
Hence the exhortations and the irony, even ridicule, 



OOD m CUEATION, 29 

of Isaiali in 44 : 8-21 ; 48 : 5-11. Jeroboam and Ahab, 
Ahaz and Manasseh^ made themselves forever famous 
in Hebrew history as idolatrous kings who aposta- 
tized from the worship of Jehovah, and suffered for it. 
14. Again, Deuteronomy (32 : 17) corrects Mr. Spencer 
M^hen he says "" the Israelites sacrificed unto devils/' 
overlooking the marginal reading ''not God:" and 
again in Psalms 106 : 37 ; both passages mean destroyers, 
whom apostatizing Hebrews sought to propitiate ; for 
which the writer rebukes them, adding, "" For they were 
new gods, coming newly up, whom their fathers knew 
not." As properly may we call Solomon a representa- 
tive Jahvist in his concubinage as in his tolerance, if 
not adoration, of the idols worshipped by his many 
wives ; or that Moses instituted circumcision, polyg- 
amy, or dancing as religious rites, much less that he ap- 
pointed devil-worship. I shall therefore insert a nega- 
tive in the following sentence from our author : 
'' Jahveh was \iiot^ originally one among many — the 
god who became supreme." He was ever the Almighty 
God of the Patriarchs, the Lord of Hosts, the God of 
Israel, the covenant-keeping God, who would not give 
His glory to another. Only as representing the Divine 
authority were the administrators of justice ever called 
gods in Israel (Ps. 82 ; 97 : 7 ; Ex. 21 : 6 ; 22 : 8, 28). 
Hence the injunction ''not to revile the gods — i.e., 
judges," as the margin correctly reads, "nor to curse 
their rulers.'^ So the witch of Endor saw the prophet 
who had judged Israel for twenty years, reappearing to 
her terrified vision in the form of a judge ; which leads 
Mr. Spencer to suggest that the Hebrews habitually 
propitiated and invoked ghosts, because their rejected 
King Saul sought to hold converse with the deceased 
Samuel ! Whereas the reverse was the truth : even Saul 



30 GOD IN CBEATION. 

had engaged in the expulsion and cutting off of necro- 
mancers out of the land.* 

Mr. Spencer's reference to the false Balaam is unfor- 
tunate for his theory ; for all soothsaying was explicitly 
forbidden (Deut. 18 : 10, 11). When summoned by 
Balak to curse Israel^ Balaam resorts to augury, whence 
he is called '' bakkosem/' the soothsayer ; a word never 
used in a good sense in the Bible, but as denoting one 
guilty of deadly sin, as marking a false prophet ; so in 
1 Sam. 15 : 23 ; 2 Kings 17 : 17 ; Ezek. 13 : 9, 23 ; 
Jeremiah 14 : 14-16, who declares, '' By sword and fam- 
ine shall those prophets be consumed." Indeed, there 
is not a passage in the Old Testament which justifies 
the claim, or the inference, that the Hebrew religion 
ever taught or sanctioned any form of augury, sooth- 
saying, or necromancy. And every reader of the New 
Testament knows how severely such practices were re- 
buked by the apostles. Thus in Acts 8 : 18-24 ; 1 Tim. 
1 : 20 ; 2 Tim^ 4 : 14 ; 2 Peter 2 : 15, 16 ; Jude 11. 
Note also the commendation of those who abandoned 
the use of curious arts, and burned their books, which 
were of the market value of fifty thousand pieces of silver ! 
(Acts 19 : 19.) In verse 9 we are told it was the vaga- 
bond Jews who were the offenders ; and upon them 
alone can Mr. Spencer base his theory. 

Thus section 587 is largely a caricature and misrepre- 
sentation of what the Hebrews believed and practised 
before their Exile. Surely their adoption of any cus- 
toms and observances similar to those of Egyptians, 
Babylonians, or Palestinians cannot make for the theory 
of evolution nor against the inspiration and originality 
of Moses ; who, while he may have copied somewhat 



^ 



* a 



See 1 Sam. 28 : 9, 13 ; Deut. 18 : 9-14. 



OOD m CREATION. 31 

from what he read and saw about him, confessedly pos- 
sessed large originating powers, and God instructed him 
to legislate for the most stubborn slaves that ever served 
a master ; slaves who, when freed, continued to hunger 
for the fleshpots of Egypt, and made for themselves 
gods like unto the calves they had seen their taskmas- 
ters worship. No, Moses was in no sense responsible 
for the idolatrous tendency of any Israelite ; nor did 
Moses enact many of their quasi-religious practices. 

15. Moreover, Mr. Spencer errs in leaping about from 
continent to continent, from the old world to the new 
world, that he may find some parallels to Hebrew cus- 
toms, carefully avoiding any attempt to parallel the 
Passover ; as though anything in the gods or the 
worship of Mexicans, Central Americans, or Peruvians 
— separated by the broad Atlantic and by thousands of 
years — could account for similar gods and usages in 
Palestine ! So of dancing, because Miriam, because 
some calf-worshippers, because David, at the return of 
the Ark of God, and rejoicing maidens of Israel danced 
for gladness, now at deliverance from Pharaoh, now at 
hope revived, now at a returning hero ; therefore danc- 
ing was a religious rite enjoined by Moses, who had not 
then received the Law of Sinai (Ex. 15 : 20 ; 32 : 6). 
He sees a parallel in the story of the birth of Moses 
with the Assyrian story of Sargina and the water-carrier 
(p. 696). But dare Mr. Spencer affirm that the two are 
not from the same original, and that the original is not 
recorded in our Exodus ? Certainly Mr. George Smith, 
who translated the Chaldean legend for us about fifteen 
years ago, thought it was derived from the Hebrew ac- 
count. So others. Many other Chaldean accounts are 
also preserved, corrected, if not first recorded in our 
Bibles. The Egyptians have a parallel of the story of 



32 ^ OOD m CREATION, 

Joseph in the house of Potiphar, in the tale of the '* Two 
Brothers/' doubtless of a later date ; but there is one, 
and that a scientific point, which can find no parallel in 
Babylonia — viz., while the Chaldean accounts of the 
creation make the creation of the moon before that of 
the sun, our Genesis correctly gives the scientific order, 
making the sun, the principal and central orb, first 
created. Yet this evidence of the superiority and God- 
derived account of our Genesis is passed by without a 
single remark ! Would Mr. Spencer have been silent if 
those records had read the other way? Heading as 
they do, they really authenticate Moses and his legisla- 
tion. It is from such and similar considerations that 
we are compelled to accept the writings and dispensa- 
tion of Moses as from God, which prepared for Oke who 
has come. Neither the one nor the other could have 
been evolved from what he saw about him, or read in 
any Records of the Past, yet the advent of Jesus was 
heralded and His way prepared by a long line of fa- 
mous prophets. 

16. But, finally, when the ancient civilizations had 
passed away, when the classic world was about to be 
plunged in the darkness and confusion of the middle 
ages, a hero appeared w^hose career is universally ad- 
mitted, but whose tomb is nowhere to be found. Greatly 
differing from Nimrod and from Abraham, both in char- 
acter and endeavor, Attila the Hun cannot be explained 
by Mr. Spencer's theory. He was the leader of Scythic 
and Tartar hordes who marched on from victory to vic- 
tory ; the one man in a thousand years from whom 
should be evolved hero-deification and worship, accord- 
ing to our author's hypothesis. Yet what follows in- 
stead ? Attila dies suddenly in his career of conquest ; 
the course of a river is turned by the labors of his army, 



GOD m CREATION, 33 

and in the silence of midnight the body of the hero, 
enclosed in a threefold coffin, is buried deep in that 
river's bed ! Not a stone is raised to his memory, not 
a prayer is offered, and he, among the greatest of his 
race, has never been enrolled in the list of Hungarian 
divinities ; has never been worshipped by the myriads 
whom he led in triumph to the gates of Rome, and who 
pillaged the eternal city. Scourge of God he may 
have been, but his death gave no rise to any religious 
cult. The great Khans who succeeded him were buried 
in the Altai Mountains ; but neither he nor they were 
adored as gods or propitiated as ghosts.* 

The travels of Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, 
describe some very significant Tartar customs. When 
a person who is held in esteem dies, astrologers are em- 
ployed to determine the auspicious day for his burial, 
which may be delayed by them for days and even months. 
Meantime the body is embalmed with spices and covered 
with an embroidered cloth. Ev^ery day before burial a 
table is set with meat and wine for the deceased, and 
opportunity is given him to partake of the refreshment. 
Sometimes the inauspicious signs require that a wall of 
the house shall be broken through for the passage of the 
corpse, in order to prevent wrong being done to the 
dead. Then, on the way to interment, bread, flesh, and 
delicate food are again placed before the body for the 
refreshment of the spirit, which is supposed to accom- 
pany it at the burial. At the grave the friends dili- 
gently paint upon leaves of smooth bark images of men 
and women, of horses and camels, of money and cloth- 
ing, amid much music loudly sounding. Then all those 
paintings are burned together with the corpse ; for they 

* See Gibbon, " Decline and FaU of the Roman Empire." 



1^ 



34 GOD IN CREATION. 

say that dead men shall have as many men and women 
servants, horses and camels, money and clothes, in an- 
other life as pictures of them were burned at their fu- 
neral, and they shall live evermore in honor, riches, and 
felicity. 

If a young Tartar die unmarried they look up a family 
that has lost an unmarried daughter ; then upon agree- 
ment the parents of the deceased celebrate their nup- 
tials, and write the marriage contract. They also paint 
on the paper of bark likenesses of men and women, 
horses, clothes and money, as just described. Then, 
burning the pictures, they say that all these things are 
carried to their children in the other world, who are 
thereby joined in the same affinity of marriage as if it 
had been celebrated while the young couple were still 
alive in the body. 

When the great Khan Mangu was taken for burial to 
Mount Altai, the soldiers who guarded and attended 
their chief are reported to have slain more than ten 
thousand men who should wait upon the departed Khan 
in another life ! * Thus we find Tartars, Scythians, 
Persians, Hindus, Egyptians, and Britons expressing, 
by very striking usages, their belief in a future life ; 
and indicating clearly enough that they had no fears of 
the dead, but rather communed and feasted with them. 
Fire-worshippers, idol-worshippers, and iconoclasts be- 
lieved in immortality of some sort, in life without the 
body, in conscious existence, or in Nirvana. Some old 
Britons, some Hindus, some Tartars, burned their dead, 
and then buried their bones in a cave of the mountains, 
enclosed in a strong chest to prevent disturbance by man 

* Standard works ad loc. ; Professor Morley's *' Marco Polo," 
also his '* Sir J. Maundeville." 



GOD IN CREATION. 35 

or beast ; but even those Hindus who adored their an- 
cestors did not fear them, and adored them onlv for the 
good they had done or might do. Their religion is to-day 
almost the same as when Alexander conversed^ through 
interpreters^ with Indian gymnosophists. Islamism 
could not change it, nor substitute its theology for the 
first Beyond, nor its doctrine of immortality for the 
second Beyond. The third Beyond is the pursuit of all 
good men, the Eternal Euleof Right and of Eighteous- 
ness. It was before Mahomet, before Gautama, before 
Moses. The rule of right is Divine. 

Cruel and perverse as ancient Egyptians were, they 
regarded justice and virtue as of the highest value. 
They prayed to their God for a long life, 110 years. 
They honored their dead, gave bread to the hungry, 
water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, and showed 
pity to the unfortunate. These were among the Com- 
mandments of obligation, many of which are scarcely 
inferior to our Christian precej)ts, and indicate Divine 
instruction.* 

* See Brngsch -Bey's "Egypt Under the Pharaohs," p. 24. 



II. 



GOD IN CREATION AND IN WORSHIP. 

Canst thou by searching find out God? (Job 11 : 7.) Then the 
Lord answered Job, and said, Where wast thou when I laid the 
foundations of the earth ? When I made the cloud the garment 
for the sea, . . . and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, and here shall 
thy proud waves be stayed ? Canst thou bind the sweet influences 
of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ? Canst thou guide Arc- 
turus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? 
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth ? I have heard 
of thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth Thee. 
(Job 38 : 4, 9, 11, 31-35 ; 42 : 5.) With God is terrible majesty : 
We cannot find out the Almighty. He is excellent in power, and 
in judgment, and in justice. Men do therefore fear Him. (37 : 
22-24.) Compare Romans 11 : 33, .36. 

Such were the questions put to Job four thousand 
years ago, and such were his answers, and the affirma- 
tions of Elihu. Yet men puzzle themselves to-day in 
trying to fiud a different solution and a different state- 
ment and affirmation. 

1. Science finds it very difficult to give a true answer 
to many interrogatories. It simply cannot explain na- 
ture. Nor is it possible for the material to explain the 
material. Xot even a diamond can explain its brill- 
iancy. The inorganic world cannot tell how nor 
whence it came to occupy space. Being, even the high- 
est order, cannot tell what life is. It can only say, mat- 
ter is matter, and entity is entity. When scientists 



GOD IN CUEATION. 37 

come to formulate an exposition of the origin of the 
world and of the universe, of the life of men and of ani- 
mals, they are bound and restricted by their own limita- 
tions. No one can unfold the mysteries pertaining to 
himself. Yet he exclaims, '' A carpenter-like theory !" 
if you suggest a Divine plan wrought out by an Al- 
mighty Architect. Next to explaining Godhead with- 
out Fatherhood is the difficulty a man has in explain- 
ing himself. True, he can give the anatomy of his body 
and classify his mental faculties, but the bond or centre 
of connection between body and mind, and what the 
mind is apart from its material operations, has not yet 
been explained by man. And the reason, as Bishop 
Butler states it, is our ignorance, or, in more polite 
modern phrase, the limitations of our being. So far 
but no farther may we go in accounting for ourselves. 
No wonder, then, that those who ignore such limita- 
tions differ among themselves in their expositions. 
Yet their *Mittle systems have their day, and pass 
away. ' ' 

Who has ever seen a house, a work of art, a suit of 
clothes, or. sate down to a good dinner, that some one 
had not built, devised the artistic product, made the 
garments, prepared the food .^ Somebody furnislied the 
materials and applied the skill. Matter and skill, sub- 
stance and genius, were required. Not a piece of bread 
or a cup of coffee can be had without multiform de- 
mands upon human contrivance. Yet there are men of 
learning and attainments who try to evolve the earth 
whereon we live, the life and light-imparting sun, the 
stars which gem the firmament, and all the heavens to 
the utmost reach of the universe, out of mere matter, 
in solids or in vapors ; and then conjure up for it the 
possession of force, somehow connected with an Infinite 



38 GOD IN CREATION 

and Eternal Energy, and so evolve world after world, 
filling space with suns, surrounding suns with satellites, 
and peopling them with living intelligences ! 

2. Nevertheless, since the historic period not a single 
new grain for food has been developed, nor a new ani- 
mal for meat, nor a new sense for man. But with his 
advent there was a culmination and a stoppage of de- 
velopment. ^' The force of nature could no farther go. " 
Gourmands and epicures have not got beyond beef and 
mutton, pork and poultry, fish and eggs ! Though 
these are enough for common folks, why should prince 
and potentate have no larger variety now than they had 
four thousand years ago ? The progress of ages still 
offers the bill of fare supplied to our ancestors in the 
dim twilight of our race to the men and women of to- 
day. Herein nature has not progressed. She still pro- 
duces milk and kine, oil and honey, flocks and game, 
the produce of the ground and the treasures of the 
waters, as she did for Noah and Abraham, Nimrod 
and Job, Egyptian and Assyrian, Hindus and Greek. 
Men may have improved the quality, but they have not 
created a new species of food. 

This would seem to be another reason for accepting 
the conclusions of Job. When the Divine hand rested 
and the Divine fiat ceased to create, then the work of 
creation ceased. Thus we are beset with difficulties 
when we try to eliminate a Creator, an overruling Provi- 
dence and Revelation from the world. We grope in the 
dark. There must be, there must have been, a Divine 
Origin, a Directive Force, a Supreme Power, that evoked 
creation according to design ; whom, for short, we call 
God, the Good Being, who is the Author of all we see, 
and know, and hope for. He gave laws to the material 
and the spiritual of the universe, to all its matter, its 



GOD m CREATION. 39 

force, its life ; without Him nothing is, or was made, 
as St. John teaches (1 : 3, 4). 

3. Accepting this Original, we may then accept the 
evolution of the universe as proceeding from the force 
of His fiat, from the laws which He appointed, from 
the energy which He applied, the life which He impart- 
ed, and the immortality which He bestowed. But what 
causative principle is there in matter which was not 
imparted or infused from without itself ? Was the 
original form hot or cold, in vapor or in solid ? What, 
or who changed its form, and aroused it from its iner- 
tia? It cannot of itself begin a motion or stop itself 
when in motion ; so its laws teach us. If matter was orig- 
inally at an incandescent measure of heat, or incalculably 
cold, how came the first life in that intense heat, or the 
caloric and the life in that intense cold ? For life was 
impossible) in those conditions. Too intense heat or 
cold is certain and absolute death. Moreover, the ani- 
mal life of our world was produced at a later period. 
Since nature is inexorable, since nothing comes from 
nothing, and like from like, how came life, the organic 
world, from dead matter, the inorganic world ? Eeason 
demands a Designer to evolve a plan ; a Cause to effect 
causation. Any other theory is bat as a gossamer thread 
which may be blown away by the first touch of wind, or 
of logic. Creation is cause and consequence, whose 
factors are matter, force, intelligence. Job and Blihu, 
Moses and David, St. John and St. Paul, tell us that 
God is the Source and Author of both. '' In the be- 
ginning God created the heavens and the earth. '^ Mat- 
ter was therefore created by Him ; but how and whence 
He created matter is not said ; only that God made and 
upholdeth all things and that He made man in His own 
image and likeness ; which we may interpret as charac- 



40 GOD IN CREATION. 

ter, personality, and immortality ; perfect as a responsi- 
ble being, but without experience. 

4. Science is now positive in telling us that matter as 
matter has no inherent vitalizing quality, no latent en- 
ergy which can transform it into life. It can neither 
interpret nor create ; has no knowing faculties, no con- 
science. The changes of its phenomena are not self- 
caused. Conscience and the cognitive faculty are not 
the forces of nature, nor explained by them. They are 
different from that which revolves the worlds on their 
axes and in their orbits. Yet a famous writer seems to 
make them identical, as though conscience, cognition, 
and gravitation were the same force differently man- 
ifested ! As though the knowing faculty, the moral 
sense, and causative force were alike ! Wherefore I say, 
the Power manifested throughout the universe and 
operating on and in material things is not the same as 
that which acts within us in consciousness. They are 
two, and they are different in kind. It surely is not 
the same force which causes the fall of an apple which 
thinks a thought, decides a question in ethics or in 
metaphysics, generates steam, and kindles human affec- 
tions. From matter may come matter, mind from 
mind, life and soul from life and soul ; they are not 
identical, but eternally different. The origin of each 
must be accounted for. The mineral does not evolve 
entity, nor mere life evolve mind, soul, spirit. Proto- 
plasm is not intelligence, is not conscience, is not that 
which possesses immortality. But we demand to know 
whence came protoplasm ? Even granting the eternity 
of matter, or of a dead globe, the mystery of life, of 
protoplasm, must still be accounted for ; it did not 
spring from the dead earth— protoplasm for the vege- 
table, protoplasm for the brute creation, protoplasm for 



GOD IN CREATION, 41 

highly organized manhood — like Minerva from the 
brain of Jupiter. Yet, like the ancients, we must have 
a Jupiter, a God of power and wisdom to explain pro- 
toplasm. No ghost theory can explain the origin of 
life. No theory about the manes or spirits of the de- 
parted can explain protoplasm and its origin. Proto- 
plastic powers demand a higher power, intelligence, de- 
sign, contrivance, and a Being who could produce it. 
Granting an Infinite and Eternal Energy is not enough. 
It must be a Living Energy, or it could not produce 
life, not even protoplastic life. The dead cannot orig- 
inate the living. Hence we aflfirm the prior existence 
of a Being who could form protoplasm. There was a 
Life, after the creation of the mineral world, who alone 
could create or evolve the living world. That Life we 
may call Infinite and Eternal ; existing before all other 
life. This seems to be proving that 2x2 = 4. But Mr. 
Spencer makes it necessary to do so, in order to forefend 
the charge of dogmatism. Hence, to repeat, granting a 
world and its sun, with his light and heat, gravitation 
and diurnal and annual revolutions, these require the 
further grant of life and protoplasm, before the produc- 
tion of vegetable or animal existence, and more yet be- 
fore we come to man. Law, or the properties of mat- 
ter, cannot germinate a rose or a pet animal, much less 
a man to smell the rose or pet the animal. Hence God 
was the first Life, and gave life to all existences, and the 
power of reproduction. 

5. An Almighty Creator, arranging and adorning the 
cosmos, imparting life, imparting soul or the immortal 
faculty to man, saves us from all absurdities, and ade- 
quately explains all mysteries. My reason refuses to be- 
lieve that that power which holds the spheres above and 
around us in their orbits is the same power as that 



42 OOD IN CREATION. 

which draws and binds together two loving hearts ; 
which causes a brick to fall and a child to kiss his 
mother ! Admit a similar feeling in the lower animals, 
it surely is not like capillary attraction, nor like that 
which attracts the distant planets. We must follow the 
rule and phenomena of nature, like from like, matter 
from matter through power and purpose, spirit and soul 
from spirit and soul. Hence the conclusion that all 
nature is from God, its lower and higher forms of life ; 
that life must be accounted for as well as matter ; and 
that God alone explains both matter and life. 

'^ As to the theory of * mental evolution' which results 
in bringing the mind of man into the same strict sub- 
jection to the energy of outside nature, under the law 
of the conservation and correlation of energy, that char- 
acterize all the phenomena with which modern physical 
science is accustomed to deal. Professor Ladd rejects 
this as 'inadequate and misleading.' He also says 
emphatically, ' the development of mind can only be 
regarded as the progressive manifestation in conscious- 
ness of the life of a real being which, although taking 
its start and direction from the action of the physical 
elements of the body, proceeds to unfold powers that 
are siii generis, according to laws of its own.' Still 
further, that ' the assumption that the mind is a real 
being, which can be acted upon by the brain, and which 
can act on the body through the brain, is the only one 
compatible with all the facts of experience. There is 
nothing which we know about the nature of material 
beings and the laws of their relation to each other, or 
about the nature of spiritual beings and their possible 
relation to material beings, or about the nature of causal 
efficiency, whether in the form of so-called physical 
energy or in that of activity in consciousness, which for- 



QOD m CREATION, 43 

bids the aforesaid assumption. On the contrary, every- 
thing which we actually know, as distinguished from 
what we conjecture to be true, or would like to have 
true for the satisfaction of certain of our quasi-scientific 
or ethical impulses, favors this assumption. And no other 
assumption, substantially different from this, is compati- 
ble with the facts of experience.' '^ — The Times'' Revieiu, 

But science has gone silly in assumptions and at- 
tempts at the solution of mysteries. Having theoreti- 
cally eliminated God from the universe. His hand and 
skill from matter and life, it next proceeded to account 
for the ever-prevalent tendency in mankind to worship 
Him ; to worship what stood for them as God. The 
explanation of this borders on the grotesque. It is 
gravely proposed to explain the religious feeling and 
worship of men for the Supreme Being by the regard 
which they are wont to cherish for departed heroes and 
benefactors. Hence it is urged that ghosts were before 
God, and propitiation of them before worship of Him, 
and, indeed, led to it, or developed into it. A more un- 
historic assumption has scarcely ever been made ; but 
Mr. Spencer makes it. The intelligence of our age is 
expected to accept it. 

6. The idea of a ghost, we are told, arose from a long 
contemplation by the living of the departed, and the 
desire to communicate with them. Hence arose belief 
in the manes of the dead, and attempts to appease and 
honor them. Dissolution of the body did not prevent 
surviving friends from calling to mind the original, as 
he appeared in life ; hence the notion of each human 
being having a double ; sleep, a swoon, epileptic fits, 
strengthened such belief ; that double was the after 
ghost, which must be propitiated ! And hence were 
developed God, and His worship, and ecclesiastical in- 



44 OOD IN CBEATION. 

stihitions ! Alas for the basis of such a theory ! The 
first ghost of authentic history was the voice of the blood 
of the slain Abel crying out against the fratricide 
Cain ! He may well have thought that he heard his 
brother's voice, and saw him reappear in his agony. 
But he had Tcnoion of God before he committed that 
awful crime, and he acknowledged God when he received 
the accursed mark ; his memory and his conscience 
made him fear and fly. Mr. Spencer must explain this, 
not by elimination of the texb and tragedy, but by ex- 
position of them. Both Cain and Abel had sacrificed 
to Jehovah, and Cain felt disappointment at the non- 
acceptance of his gifts, and had envy toward Abel, whose 
sacrifice was approved ; wherefore he slew him. Criti- 
cism rejects some words about " the conversation in the 
field, '^ but no one rejects the account as not credible 
and historic. And it upsets Mr. Spencer's theory alto- 
gether. Here we have God, and the worship or sacri- 
fice to Jahveh, before any death of hero, parent, or 
benefactor, and before any ghost ! The narrative is 
conclusive of belief in the existence of Deity and of 
Divine worship in the earliest historic period. That 
belief and worship cannot be explained away. No mat- 
ter for this argument, whether one believes in the in- 
spiration of Genesis or not ; the record is that of facts 
touching belief and conduct of Cain and Abel. Either 
this narrative must be expunged, or the facts of that 
early belief and worship must be accepted. There is 
but one other resort, and that is for Mr. Spencer to pro- 
duce earlier records of earlier instances from which sac- 
rifice and belief in God were developed. This is what 
cannot be done. I say so without dogmatism, for 1 ad- 
mit that this very early belief in God does not prove 
His existence, nor creative power, though it does prove 



GOD IN CREATION. 45 

Cain's belief in His Providence and punishment of sin. 
The record does not prove inspiration, yet the record is 
indisputable. There are no evidences that Egyptians, 
Chaldeans, or Hindus have any reliable accounts of an 
earlier date, nor early accounts of non-belief in God and 
of no worship and sacrifice being offered the Supreme 
God. I admit that Mr. Spencer can probably prove his 
theory from Greek and Roman literature,* but not from 
the more ancient literatures of Hebrews and other 
Semitics, nor from Egypt and India, nor from ancient 
Gauls and Britons. Nor can it explain the conduct of 
Nimrod and of Abraham. These all believed in a Su- 
preme Being, whom they worshipped, and erected tem- 
ples and altars to His honor. Some of them, like some 
moderns, may have erred in their ideas of Him, in the 
attributes and manifestations ascribed to Him ; while 
all believed in and adored Him. He is not limited by 
our definitions of Him, any more than a man is rich or 
poor in fact by being so rated by a friend or an enemy. 
We did not need a philosopher to tell us that we may 
err in ascribing too anthropomorphic a character to 
God ; too many of our own ideas, emotions, and voli- 
tions as attributes and passions of Jehovah ; thus mak- 
ing Him more or less spiritual, intellectual, or human, 
according to our scale of intelligence, according as we 
descend in measure of attainment to tlie condition of a 
Hottentot, rag-picker, or savage, or rise to the height 

* Athenagoras in his '* Plea" is careful to poiat out that the 
names, as well as the existence of the gods of the Empire, are of 
recent date. All inclined to accept the Spencerian Evolution of 
Ecclesiastical Institutions should study chapters 17-21 of the 
** Plea of St. Athenagoras," now above seventeen hundred years 
old. He is explicit in showing that the gods of the State were 
much too young for him. 



46 GOD IN CREATION. 

of Psalmist or prophet, like Abraham or Moses, David 
or Homer, Plato or Paul, Isaiah or Milton. A Pascal 
will form a loftier conception of Deity than a peasant, 
and a Leibnitz different from a laborer. 

7. As we revise this paper, we read Mr. Burroughs in 
Poidular Science Monthly, thus : '' Was it Talleyrand 
who replied to some enthusiast who proposed to start a 
new religion that he advised him to begin by getting 
himself crucified, and to rise again on the third day ? 
As a new cult founded upon reason alone, or as a nat- 
ural religion alone, Christianity could not have coped 
with the supernatural religions that then possessed tlie 
world. Men's minds were not prepared for it, and it is 
probably equally true that the mass of mankind are 
not yet prepared for a religion based upon natural 
knowledge alone.'' Certainly not, and never will be. 
Only one religion has had the preparation of prophecy. 
Two thousand years were illumined with the prophetic 
utterances in preparation for our Christian religion. 
Even were it possible those deliverances could have been 
made without the inspiration of God, the fact is never- 
theless demonstrable that from the Divine covenant 
with Abraham to its culmination with the crucifixion 
of Jesus Christ, two millenniums were occupied in pre- 
paring for it. It is an unexampled fact of human his- 
tory and experience. The religions of the world offer 
no parallel to this. Some reformers in morals and re- 
ligion had had attendants and disciples, but Jesus alone 
had the long line of prophetic preparation for His com- 
ing. Possibly when Talleyrand's scornful jest shall be 
realized, and a new teacher shall get himself crucified, 
and then rise again to life on the third day, Christian- 
ity may have a real rival, but probably not till then. It 
was foretold that One should arise out of Jadea who 



GOD IN CREATION. 47 

should possess the earth. He Himself has warned His 
followers of many anti-Christs. 

8. But our history is amazed when learned men at- 
tempt to explain the origin of such a religion by a theory 
about heroes and ghosts. The notion is inadequate to 
explain the religious cult of Egypt and Babylonia, much 
less that of Israel. There we find the record of a Sab- 
bath, of Divine worship, of a cosmogony and the creation 
of man by a Great God. These are facts of history 
which no philosophic guess can overturn or eliminate. 
Written on Egyptian stone and parchment, inscribed 
on Assyrian bricks, voiced by the Hebrew Lawgiver, 
those ancient records cannot be set aside. They de- 
mand explanation ; eliminated they cannot be. They 
tell us of the very early belief of men in One Eternal 
and Omnipotent God, the Creator of all things, the 
Bestower of life. Before the life of any hero was writ- 
ten they described the worship of God. Put the begin- 
nings of history as far back as you please, you will there 
find the affirmation of a Creative God, before the biog- 
raphy of any man. To educe God from a ghost as the 
order of development in Egypt or in Babylonia, is to 
pervert and falsify the records of those countries. Says 
Kenrick, " There is nothing in history, or in the monu- 
ments, which indicates that the gods of Egypt were 
really deified men. We find everywhere, in the civilized 
ancient world, a belief in one supreme power, coexist- 
ing with polytheism, either as the result of a primeval 
revelation of this doctrine, or of that conviction of a 
unity of purpose and administration which forces itself 
upon the mind, from its own consciousness of a moral 
and intellectual unity, and from the observation of the 
external world/' * 



¥: <( 



Egypt," vol. i., pp, 295, 306. 



48 GOD IN CREATION. 

Embalming by the Egyptians was coeval with their 
nationality. Did they fear the ghosts of their dead 
when they placed them in their best rooms ; at their 
feasts and family gatherings ; in processions upon occa- 
sions of great rejoicing? A mirthful people, they had 
no dread of an embalmed friend or relative, though 
they might grieve at the death of the wicked. Their 
mummies emphasized for them the doctrine of immor- 
tality, and were the outcome of their belief in it. The 
bodies were preserved for future occupancy in the resur- 
rection life. It was a practice arising from their belief 
in another life. God was prior to any worship of Him ; 
and immortality came from Him, not from the practice 
of embalming. 

9. Egyptians originally knew but One Self-Existent 
Being, who was the Generator of all things. The sun 
in his meridian glory became His best representative, 
whom they called Ra ; in the nocturnal hidings of his 
splendor, Atoum ; as the giver and sustainer of life, 
Kepher. But in the earliest dawn of their history they 
worshipped One Eternal and Good God who was the 
Bestower of all the blessings they enjoyed. The gross 
superstition of later times was developed from their re- 
ligiousness, not their piety from their polytheism. 
Originally their priests knew the doctrine of the Unity 
and Oneness of Deity, latterly manifested in a Triad of 
ways ; and they could join the poet in affirming " One 
God, One Law, One Element." * 

Their " Ritual of the Dead " represents the soul by 
the symbol of the God Ra, holding the two rings of 
eternity, or carrying the ring-handled cross — the em- 

* Sir G.Wilkinson ; Kawlinson, '' Keligions Ancient World, " pp. 
31, 32, 36-38. 



GOB IN CREATION, 49 

blem of life. Small figures of Osiris or a scarabaeus 
were placed on or near the dead. The pious soul, hav- 
ing finished its earthly pilgrimage, at length arrives at 
the bark of the sun, and is received by Ea, and feasts 
on delicious food. But the wicked are condemned, 
some to a long course of torments — life in various un- 
clean animals — and then to annihilation, which was ter- 
rible for an Egyptian to contemplate. It is a striking 
fact that the Egyptian " god who was the giver of life 
becomes its redeemer and saviour ; having himself been 
raised from death, he conducts the just to resurrection.^^ 
(P. Smith.) He was their saviour and their lord. He 
speaks to them, and they speak to him ; his glorj'' illu- 
minates them. They had prepared themselves by sac- 
rifice, by prayers, by a righteous life and good deeds for 
the enjoyment of Osiris and his blessedness. But the 
very wicked, even the kings of Egypt, were an abhor- 
rence to gods and men. * 

10. The burnt bricks of Babylon and Nineveh testify 
to their peoples' belief in a great God, called II or Ilou, 
corresponding to the Hebrew El and the Egyptian Ra. 
His first temple was Babil, erected by Nimrod at Babel ; 
meaning the gate or house of God. II was superior to 
their other gods. He was before chaos, before crea- 
tion, before man. To him the first Babylonian hero 
bnilt a temple, and without any development from the 
ancient national usages. Their temple was contempo- 
raneous with their capital ; built in the lifetime of their 
first royal benefactor : prior to any famous burial, and 
before the death of their hero ; probably before their 
polytheism. In this temple II was worshipped, sacri- 

* Sir G. Wilkinson ; Kenrick, vol. i., p. 409 ; Rawlinson, *^ Re- 
ligions Anoient World," pp. 28-30. 

3 



50 GOD IN CREATION, 

ficed to and believed in, before Babylonians believed in 
ghosts, spectres, and omens. They were religious be- 
fore they became superstitious and polytheistic, had a 
great temple before a great tomb, before a known hero 
or a ghost. 

Their '* Saints' Calendar" is instructive as to their 
ritual — worship and days of sacrifice— a ritual for every 
day. It has been translated from the Inscriptions, and 
gives the order of doing religious duties and performing 
religious services. It is of course later than the origin 
of those duties and services. It prescribes suitable sac- 
rifices for the first day of the month, sacred to Anu and 
Bel. *' The king his offering made, a gazelle without 
blemish, to the mighty God. Eaising his right hand 
to the altar, the Prince of many nations worshipped." 
He acted as priest of the Mooisr, called the mighty mon- 
arch of the night, and as priest of the Sun, called the 
great Lady of the world. Sacrifices Tfere also appoint-^ 
ed for each day and for each Sabbath — i.e., for the ^^^k^^^^^h^H 
fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth of each 
month, these were Sabbaths ; and every day had its 
sacrifice. Later on each month became sacred to some 
particular deity, like May with modern Roman Catho- 
lics. But from the earliest of Babylonian times, the 
first day of each month and its several sevenths were 
strict Sabbaths, when no w^ork might be done, no legis- 
lation enacted, no pleasures sought in the chase or other- 
wise ; not even medicine procured for the sick, whether 
prince or peasant. They were days of sanctity and sac- 
rifice. Only Jewish and Puritan Sabbaths can be 
compared with them. No theory of ecclesiastical de- 
velopment can explain them. They were five hundred 
to a thousand years before Moses.* 

* '' Eecords of the Past," vol. vii., pp. 159-70. 



GOD IN CREATION, 51 

As early as the time of Abraham the divine names 
had increased to a dozen or more : II or Hon was first, 
then Ann and Hea^ Bel, Nergal, Istar, Asshnr, with 
five great though created gods.* This shows the de- 
velopment into polytheism was later than their original 
conceptions of Godhead : after Ra was his Triad ; so 
after II was his Triad, followed by others ; so after the 
Hebrew Jah or Jahveh Elohim some later Israelites fell 
into idolatry. But in each nation the first idea and 
conception of God was in Unity, belief in One Supreme 
Being, from whom all lesser gods proceeded or were 
derived. 

11. It was the same in India, Atman included all 
other deities. The earliest nation had the simplest idea 
of Godhead. The simple was primary, not the mani- 
fold and complex. Very ancient was the idea of God 
in Triunity, which Hegel holds to be the essential con- 
ception of God as eternal, living Spirit, fully revealed 
in Christianity, which is the ultimate and absolute re- 
ligion. It was to God in Unity that temples were first 
erected and sacrifices offered. No historic nation is 
without its god, as before anything else, superior to all 
else, worshipped and honored before hero or ghost. 
Ra, II, Jah, El, Zeus, were before all other gods, or as 
expressing the same idea, was the One God Supreme in 
Egypt, Babylon, Judea, India, Greece. So Pope's 
translation of the Iliad makes Homer to sing : 

" The united strength of all the gods above 
In vain resists the omnipotence of Jove. 

* ' Juno, submit, and seek not thou to find 
The secret counsels of almighty mind." 

— Book I., ad fin. 



* See ^' Kecords of the Past," vols, iii., vii., ix. 



52 GOD IN CREATION, 

Moreover, when the various deities of the older na- 
tions might be counted by hundreds or even thousands, 
the theology of Gauls and Britons was very simple. 
They had long reverenced God and sacrificed to Him, 
before they wandered into the mazes of polytheism or 
developed a pantheon. Very simple were their theistic 
ideas, even when they had a flourishing commerce, which 
exerted an influence upon and brought them into ac- 
quaintance with the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf, 
the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, as well as 
the dwellers in Palestine, the shores of the Mediterra- 
nean and of the Western Isles. Yet their records are 
barren, and afford no ground for believing that tombs 
and sepulchres were the originals of temples and shrines 
to any Deity. Witness the Pyramid at Gizeh, the great 
temples at Karnak and Luxor, of Belus at Babylon, of 
Jehovah at Jerusalem, even of Apollo at Delphi, as well 
as the famous temples at Baalbec and Palmyra. These 
were among the first erected by man in those several 
countries, yet they were in no sense tombs or burial- 
places, though some partook of a monumental as well 
as sacred character, designed for sacrifice and the wor- 
ship of Deity. Singular, too, that among so many 
other discoveries only one sepulchre and not one Assyrian 
burial temple has yet been found ; but several altars 
have been discovered in that region. Not one chapel 
for all the Assyrian dead. Indeed, says Layard, '* The 
Assyrians appear to have avoided all allusions to their 
dead and to funeral rites. Did they burn or expose them, 
like the Persians ?'' * From the custom of burning and 
exposure in India, there could be few ancient remains 
of sepulchres. And that originally they had but One 

* *• Babylon and Nineveh," p. 481. 



OOD m CREATION, 53 

Eternally Existing Supreme Being, later expressed by 
his manifold attributes, is now pretty generally con- 
ceded. The Hindus belong to the great Aryan race, 
like the Persians and Britons, so that few radical theo- 
logical differences probably existed among them. But 
a word from Max Mliller is appropriate. He says : 
'' Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first begin- 
nings, we find it free from many blemishes that affected 
it in its later stages. ^^ * This is true of the religions 
of India three thousand years ago. Again he says : 
" Eeligion is trust, and that trust arose in the begin- 
ning from impressions made on the mind and heart of 
man by the order and wisdom of nature — the re- 
turn of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of 
the seasons, the law of cause and effect traced back to 
a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose 
to call it. The principal god of the Vedic period, 
judging from the poetic remains, we may call Indra, 
the god of the bine sky, the gatherer of clouds, the 
giver of rain, the wielder of the thunderbolt, the con- 
queror of all the powers of darkness, the bringer of light, 
the source of freshness, vigor, and life, the ruler and 
lord of the world, the Indian Zeus,"f elsewhere called 
the Zeus father and generator, " Dyaush pita ganita,'^ 
the Heaven-Father of the Sanscrit and the earliest 
Vedic hymns. When corruption had degraded the an- 
cient religions, then reformers arose. Buddha was a 
reformer, asserting the Oneness and Personality of 
God. Confucius was a reformer, teaching right living 
and duty to Heaven. Zoroaster was also a reformer, as 
well as an original teacher. If he ever conquered Baby- 

* '* Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i., p. 23. 
t ** What Can India Teach UsV" pp. 198-201. 



54 GOD IN CREATION. 

Ion, it was probably in the religions sense, turning the 
people for a time to the worship of One God, who, he 
claimed, inspired him in occasional interviews. Thus 
he was enabled to teach the true doctrine to happy 
Bactria.* So of Mahomet. His life was purer and his 
doctrine more spiritual when his voice was a solitary 
voice crying in the wilderness, than when accompanied 
by a myriad of followers. Indeed, the original teaching 
of all known founders of religious systems was uniformly 
higher and more spiritual than that of later disciples, f 
12. As to China, amid much complexity, the most 
recent accounts of its theology agree with the principles 
for which we contend in this paper. Confucius him- 
self belongs to the sixth century B.C. So Dr. Legge, 
etc. He was a moral philosopher, the contemporary of 
Pythagoras, though probably they never met. By the 
great splendor with which he celebrated the funeral of 
his mother, he revived the old usages of his people in 
respect for the dead. But he believed in a God far 
above and superior to them. The monarch became his 
representative on earth. He taught silence and intro- 
spection by asking. Does Heaven speak ? We see re- 
sults of God's operations, but do we hear Heaven ? The 
path of duty is to be traced to its origin in Heaven. 
The superior man waits for the appointments of Heaven, 
while the mean man is looking for lucky occurrences. 
Even the sovereign may not neglect the improvement 
of his character, nor to serve his parents, nor to acquire 
the knowledge of men and of Heaven. Sincerity is the 
way of Heaven ; the attainment of sincerity the way of 
men. Mencius derived his doctrine of concord or love 

* Kawlinson, ** Religions Ancient World," p. 64. 

f Argyll, ^' Unity of Nature," chap, xii., pp. 294, 295. 



QOD IN CREATION, 55 

from the goodness and paternity of God. It was the 
Divine will that men should love one another. Men 
are complete and perfect only as they do the complete 
and perfect will of Heaven. Even the prince and king 
must be corrected when wrong. If the king will not re- 
form his great faults, he ought to be dethroned ; pretty 
democratic doctrine. Let the prince be benevolent and 
righteous. Let him be correct in all his acts, and the 
kingdom will be firmly settled. This is far from teach- 
ing the Divinity of the King. Again it is said, Be- 
nevolence, righteousness, self -consecration, fidelity, with 
unwearied joy in these virtues, constitute the nobility of 
Heaven ; to be a king or a ta-foo constitutes the no- 
bility of man. Men of antiquity cultivated the nobility 
of Heaven, and the nobility of man came to them. To 
condense another paragraph : Men reverse the true 
order, miss the mark, and lose the reward of true no- 
bility. Ennobled by Chaou the Great, He fills them 
with His wine ; He satiates us with His goodness, 

*' Heaven in producing mankind, 

Gave them their various faculties and relations, with their specific 

laws. 
These are the invariable rules of nature for all to hold, 
And all should love this admirable virtue." 

Said Confucius, ^' The maker of this ode knew the 
principle of our nature.'' 

Our recent missionaries to China give a similar inter- 
pretation of Confucius and the classic belief — belief in 
the personality, spiritual nature, justice, benevolence, 
and omnipotence of God, the Supreme Ruler, who was 
also called Heaven. Says Dr. Moule, the Bishop of 
Mid-China, *' Confucius undoubtedly believed in a Di- 
vine power ; a God, the Lord paramount of the earthly 



56 GOD m CREATION. 

monarch ; a God who heard and saw the actions of 
men^ and sent down weal and woe according to the jus- 
tice of their deserts." Again, '' Above the heavens is 
Heaven/' is said with finger pointing upward when 
taking an oath. '' It is man's to scheme ; it is 
Heaven's to accomplish." ^Mn times of deep afflic- 
tion Chinamen are known to omit all the usual forms 
of worship in their temples, and prostrating themselves 
before an open window or on the ground in the open 
air, to pray earnestly to Heaven. Some regularly wor- 
ship Heaven, offering prayers and burning incense to 
Him. The annual and solemn service of the Emperor 
is of this character, the sacrifice and worship being 
under the open sky — an immemorial custom shedding 
light on the primeval faith. But this ancient faith has 
become greatly obscured in China. Many, while be- 
lieving in the Supreme Being, infinite in power and 
goodness, also worship inferior divinities, and pay di- 
vine honors to Confucius. But this is of comparatively 
recent origin, showing that it is only a counterfeit of 
the true original. Yet occasionally one finds a China- 
man who rejects all forms of polytheism, and holds the 
primitive faith as taught in the ancient classics. '' Says 
the Eev. W. Muirhead, of Shanghai, of the London 
Missionary Society : "' A particular case came before 
me a short time ago, of a man from the westerly part of 
China. He was interested in what I said, but, owing to 
his different dialect, failed to comprehend the address, 
until I had personal conversation with him in his own 
dialect, when we had a long interview. He maintained 
the ancient monotheism of the Chinese in the strongest 
manner, and quoted passages from the classics to that 
effect. He had never before heard the Word or read 
any Christian books, but had drawn his ideas of religion 



GOD IN CREATION, 57 

from the ancient classics of his country."^ To the 
objection against this early belief of the Chinese in one 
true God, Dr. Martin says : *' The idea of God is ex- 
pressed in their ancient books with so much clearness 
as to make us wonder and lament that it has left so 
faint an impression on the national mind/' He pre- 
sents proofs of the knowledge of God from those ancient 
books, and then shows how in subsequent ages the re- 
ligious sentiment was frittered away.f The Rev. Dr. 
Edkins J says : '^ No doctrine is more manifestly an ar- 
ticle of faith than the personality of God." And, p. 
116 : ^' The ancient Chinese believed in God as a per- 
sonal, active being, the ruler of heaven and earth, just, 
powerful, and merciful. '^ Hence the polytheism and 
ancestor worship of China lend no aid to Mr. Spencer's 
notion of ecclesiastical evolution. The Chinese were 
believers in and worshippers of a Supreme Being, before 
they deified a king or adored a parent. It was Heaven 
who ennobled men. 
' 13. As to ghosts, most people who have believed in 
them were more concerned with "' how to lav them,'' 
than how to honor them ; how to confuse and discomfit 
them, in order to prevent their troubling the living. 
Charles II. of Spain was largely affected by his supersti- 
tious and ghostly terrors ; but no one will affirm that 
such terrors were evolved from his religion. A people 
may transform in imagination their heroes and kings 
into divinities, as good wives are wont to regard their 
husbands as better than other men, and erect memorials 
to them. Witness England's Queen and her monu- 

* See article by Rev. John Liggins, in Spirit of Missions for May, 
1887. 

f Rev. J. Liggins, '* The Chinese, "by Dr. Martin, p. 100. 
if " Religious Condition of the Chinese," p. 79. 



58 GOD IN CREATION. 

ments to Prince Albert. Thus Eoman kings were 
placed among the gods of the Empire, and their statues 
placed in the Pantheon. But did intelligent Romans 
really worship a deified emperor ? Does Queen Victoria 
actually worship her departed consort in any similar 
way to her worship of God ? Great as we honor some 
national benefactors, heroes in war and giants in states- 
manship, we ever distinguish our regard for them from 
our reverence for God. 

14. So was it among the earliest nations. We have 
yet to learn of any historic people who deified a hero 
or propitiated a ghost before they believed in God and 
worshipped Him. In Egypt, Babj^lonia, Assyria, 
Scythia, India, China, Britain, and probably even in 
Greece, a Supreme God, omnipotent, the Creator and 
Euler of all, was the primitive belief. To Him temples 
were erected at a very earlj^ period and forms of wor- 
ship established. Thus in the days of Seth men called 
upon the Lord, as Jahn says, in public assemblies. 
Thus Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, and offered 
burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a 
sweet savor ; a record of acceptable worship, which has 
its parallel among the inscriptions of a time ages before 
Moses. They also give the Divine blessing to the saved 
man and his family. The Babylonian account of 
Noah's sacrifice reads in the plural : ''The gods col- 
lected to the burning ; the gods collected to the good 
burning. Over the sacrifice they gathered.''* But 
clearly there was then no polytheism ? It was a later 
inscriber who expressed the idea. T^his change by the 
scribe may account for other polytheistic phrases in 

* G, Smith's '^Chaldean Account in Genesis," pp. 273-276; 
'' KecordH of the Past," vol. xi,. p. 141 ; vol. vii., pp. 131-141. 



/ 



GOD m CREATION. 59 

early records. An old Babylonian thus prayed : '^ Like 
a bird may the soul fly to a lofty place ! To the holy 
hands of God may it ascend. May the soul shine ra- 
diant. Eldest Son of Heaven, grant him an abode of 
happiness/'* '^ There was one place — apparently a 
penal fire — reserved for unfaithful wives and husbands, 
and for youths who had dishonored their bodies." 
So the Hindus : " To those regions, where evil spirit* 
dwell, and which utter darkness involves, will such men 
surely go after death, as destroy the purity of their own 
soul.'^ f 

15. Now what is there in opposition to all this 
cumulative and increasing evidence of the Divine 
origin of instruction to man touching God and His 
worship in primitive times and among historic na- 
tions ? just this, that among the Bongos, Samoans, 
Wedda, and some American Indians are to be found 
examples to which a different explanation may be given ! 
But should that offset the testimony of civilization, and 
nullify the almost universal consciousness of mankind ? 
What is there in Greece or Rome, after the eighth cen- 
tury B.C. — and there was nothing previously — that can 
overturn the proof to be found in the case of Noah, as 
recorded in Genesis and in those Chaldean brick in- 
scriptions which narrate the same event? Even if you 
question the account of Moses, how will you dispose of 
the Babylonian Record ? The two are a thousand years 
and two thousand miles apart ; they agree in sub- 
stance as to Noah and his acceptable sacrifice, as well 
as that God imparted instruction to man touching his 
duty to God. Add to this the worship of Cain and 

* ** Records of the Past," vol. i., p. 143 ; vol. iii., p. 134. 
f Crauford's '' India," vol. i., p. 191. 



60 GOD m CREATION. 

Abel, Seth and Enoch, Abraham, Melchisedec, and 
Jethro, the long line of Hebrew prophets who prepared 
the way for Christ ; and then conclude, if your intelli- 
gence will let you, that Christianity is the outcome of 
hero-worship, and Jesus Christ but a Hebrew Ghost ! 
For myself, I could as soon believe all the marvels of 
the "^ Arabian Nights/'* 

16. And to be scientific and trustworthy, the religion 
of each historic nation must be accounted for, each for 
itself and by itself. Christians derive theirs from He- 
brews, buttressed now by the inscribed records of other 
Semitic nations ; also attested to by the earliest belief 
of the great Japhite or Aryan family and by the old 
Hamites of Egypt. So, like Kepler, we may say, " 
Almighty God, we are but thinking Thy thoughts after 
Thee !'' — thoughts of Creation ; thoughts of Divine 
Providence ; thoughts of God's everlasting love to 
man ; thoughts of return to Him in our habitual wor- 
ship of Him. Like the Psalmist, we may say : '' The 
day is Thine, and also the night ; Thou hast prepared 
the light and the sun ; the borders of the earth, sum- 
mer, and winter. Arise, God, plead Thine own cause ; 
see how foolish men reproach Thee daily" (Ps. 74). 
For, of Thee, the First Cause, and through Thee, the 
Efficient Cause, and to Thee, the Final Consummation, 
are derived all our knowledge, all our worship, and all 
our love of Thee (Romans 11 : 33-36). 

* See Dawson's " FossU Man.^' 



III. 



ANCIENT LEGENDS ABOUT GOD AND 

CREATION. 

With our present knowledge of the cosmogony of the 
ancient Egyptians, we may safely say that they believed 
matter was a creation of the breath of the Supreme and 
Eternal God. Thus Jamblichus quotes an old Hermetic 
book as saying : '' Before all the things that actually 
exist, and before all beginnings, there is one God, prior 
even to the first (created) god and king, remaining un- 
moved in the singleness of His own Unity/' His name, 
known only to those who were initiated into the high- 
est mysteries, was " Niih Pit Nuk,^^ or '' I am that I 
am/' the same that was revealed to Moses (Ex. 3 : 14). 
It had been known to the priests of Egypt as an esoteric 
truth, hidden from the people, buried in allegorical 
representations of Divine qualities and attributes, con- 
cealed in monstrous combinations of animal and human 
forms, which the people ignorantly worshipped as di- 
vinities. Thus though the name revealed by Moses \vas 
not new to the Egyptian priests, it was quite new to 
their people, to Egyptians and Israelites then in the 
land of the Nile. Only the more privileged and those 
initiated into the profounder mysteries attained such 
knowledge. Says Plutarch, there was an inscription on 
the temple of Sais which read : '^I am all that was, 
and is, and will 1)0." 



G2 GOD IN CREATION. 

The papyri tell us '^ that there was an origi7iaI gen- 
erator in heaven and on earth, who was not engendered, 
who was verily the sole living God, self-engendered, 
who was from the beginning, who created all, but was 
Himself uncreated.'' The oldest piece of literature in 
the world, according to Eenouf ('' Hibbert Lectures," 
p. 197), is a hymn to the Maker of Heaven and Earth, 
the Self-existent One, Living in the Truth. This was 
the first belief, one or two millenniums before Greek 
and Latin writers visited the Black Country of the 
Nile. Latterly this idea of Divine, Original Lenity be- 
came lost in the plurality of his manifestations ; but 
the priests had long known it, and had taught it to the 
privileged few. 

The Supreme God was also called Amun, who created 
his associates, and made them members of his pantheon. 
Amun imparted the living principle to Maut, who then 
became the universal Mother. Amun and Maut created 
the heavens and the earth. Of this world the sun was 
the great vivifier, and was regarded as the source as 
well as the sign of life ; the great father. Shining in 
the firmament above he was superior to all other heav- 
enly lights, the universal lord. Egyptian ideas of 
creation were that it was a growth in stages of develop- 
ment, by the agency of certain gods, wlio were created 
by the One Supreme God, as matter also was created by 
Him. The earliest written language of Babylonia con- 
tains verbal resemblances with that of Egypt and Ethio- 
pia ; some words being common to each and to the 
Hebrew. Thus the Divine names El and H or Ilou, Ea 
and Jah, seem to be derived from the same roots. Says 
Max Miiller : " Zeus in Sanscrit, Latin, and German 
shows us the same Deity in India, Greece, and Italy, 
when no Greek had set foot in Europe, and no Hindu 



GOD IN CREATION, 63 

had bathed in the sacred water of the Ganges. Zeus 
was the great Heaven-Father, the Generator of all/' 
C' Hibbert Lectures/' p. 277.) 

The Babylonian narrative of creation belongs to the 
upper or Accadian division of Ohaldea, and is probably 
not later than the time of Abraham. It is of great an- 
tiquity, five centuries before Moses. Those legends, 
with their poetic fancies, were not the original form of 
the narrative, but the later accounts derived from tra- 
ditions, of what had been handed down touching 
those matters. Thus the creation legends of Chaldea 
are the embellished accounts of preyiously known facts 
which had been transmitted bv tradition, and then in- 
scribed upon the bricks and cylinders — the books of 
those times — and placed in libraries. The Accadians 
are treated by some as of an unknown period. They 
overlook what Genesis (10 : 8-10) tells us, that Nimrod 
was the son of Gush or Kash, and the beginning of his 
kingdom was Babel, Erech, Calneh, and Accad, This 
people, therefore, are after Nimrod, and in the line of 
divinely imparted knowledge from Noah. Sumir is an 
old name for Lower Babylonia, of which Ur was the 
capital city. It was the birthplace of x\braham. 

None of those Accadian bricks have been preserved to 
us, so far as yet discovered. But in the seventh century 
before our era Assurbanipal sent to Babylon, and had 
copies of them made for his royal library at Nineveh. 
Thus the literary treasures of Babylon, Borsippa, 
Cutha, Accad, Ur, Erech, Lorsa, Nipur, and other 
cities were copied and transferred to Assyria. It w^as 
a great undertaking, and successfully carried out, and 
has yielded vast increase to our knowledge. Many of 
those brick volumes have been discovered during the 
present generation ; some are broken ; some but frag- 



64 GOD m CREATION. 

nientary records ; some have but a single word on a 
line ; yet enough can be made out and translated to in- 
form us of this nineteenth century a.d. of what was 
believed in the nineteenth century B.C., touching the 
creation of our world. 

Assurbanipal w^as the son of Esarhaddon, who was the 
son of Sennacherib, who was the son of Sargon, who, 
then reigning King of Assyria, captured Samaria in 721 
B.C., destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and 
carried its principal citizens into his dominions. The 
position and relations of the Southern Kingdom of 
Judah were much like those of our colonies to England 
during the reign of George III. We cannot belie v^e that 
Assurbanipal borrowed his literary treasures from cap- 
tive Israelites, or that Hebrews in Judea received their 
sacred writings and religious ideas from Assyria, as 
original documents. It is not consonant with the laws 
of our nature. Whether those legends and traditions 
are true or false, credible or incredible, they were not 
derived from Israelites, nor originally communicated to 
Jews by Assyrians ; but they were of great antiquity, 
common among the various nations who were descended 
from Noah. '' Babylonia has been called the China of 
the ancient world. It was a kingdom of books and li- 
braries, schools and universities, of learning and litera- 
ture ; education opened the way, as in China, to state 
employment ; and the London Times suggests that com- 
petitive examinations may have existed for the civil ser- 
vice. Every great Babylonian city had at least one li- 
brary. The most famous of these was founded at Agane 
by Sargon I. before the seventeenth century B.C." This 
contained the great work on astronomy and astrology, 
in seventy-two volumes, which was translated into 
Greek, 



OOD m CREATION. 65 

** The Assyrians derived their literature from the 
Babylonians, for they were not primarily a literary 
people, but warriors and legislators, like the Eomans. 
This library of Nineveh was established by Assurbani- 
pal, and the early libraries of Assyria, as well as of 
Babylonia, were despoiled to make it, and scribes were 
kept copying and re-editing the old literature of 
Chaldea." Mr. Sayce says : '' A new text was the most 
valuable present a Babylonian city could send, and it 
was prized with almost the same enthusiasm as a classi- 
cal manuscript in the age of the Renaissance. '^ The 
discoveries of the spade upon the Tigris and the Eu- 
phrates, Egyptologists and modern research prove and 
illustrate their origin and their meaning beyond rea- 
sonable doubt. It is, in fact, more irrational to reject 
than to accept the demonstrable evidence. 

The seventh Chaldean Tablet records the existence 
of One Supreme Deity, who created lesser gods ; says 
that great monsters were produced by chaos, delightful 
or perfect after their kind ; that then the living crea- 
tures began to be : the cattle of the field, and the creep- 
ing things of the field ; a place was fixed for the living 
creatures. According to others, there was a period 
when nothing existed but chaos, darkness, and an abyss 
of waters, in which hideous monsters were produced by 
a twofold living principle of good and of evil. The 
order of creation is thus given : 

*' When above were not raised the heavens, and be- 
low on earth a plant had not grown up ; when the 
abyss had not broken open their boundaries ; chaos (or 
water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of 
the whole of them. The gods Lahma or Lahama = Ana 
and Anata, the male and the female, were the living- 
principle of creation in the universe. Then Thou didst 



66 QOB IN CREATION. 

call or order the foundation of the ground ; Thou didst 
beautify the heaven, and the face of heaven ; Thou didst 
give beauty to the earth. Let the earth, Thou saidst, 
be made for the dwelling of man/' Such seems to be 
the meaning of the narrative. And the fifth tablet 
says : *^ It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great 
gods. Stars, in appearance as animals, he arranged. 
To fix the year through the observation of the constel- 
lations, twelve months or signs of stars in three rows he 
arranged, from the day when the year commences unto 
the close. He marked the positions of the wandering 
stars (planets) to shine in their courses. And that they 
might do no injury, nor trouble any one, the positions 
of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with them.'^ * By 
this arrangement a superintending Providence over 
creation's work is evidently taught. 

Some assign the creation of mankind to Hea, who 
pronounced in detail the duties of the man and of the 
woman, respectively : '' he for sacrifice, prayer, reverent 
worship, with instrumental music ; she to beautify for 
him ; not to do evil ; to give him drink, refreshment ; 
to be faithful; his enemies to be her enemies." All 
which is quite up to the standard of Milton. '' Hea 
was angry when man corrupted his purity ; all his seed 
may he destroy. In the language of the fifty great gods 
by his fifty names he called, and turned away in anger 
from him. May he be conquered, and at once cut off. 
Enmity and plunder to father and son, to father and 
son enmity and plunder. The fruits of the earth may 
he not touch ; his desire cut off, disappointed ; his will 
not answered : the prayer of his mouth let no god hear, 

* Chaldean Account in Genesis, pp. 62-70 ; " Records of the 
Past," vol. ix., pp. 117, 118. 



OOD m GBEATION, 67 

no god shall notice ; his back shall be broken^ and shall 
not be healed ; in urgent trouble no god shall relieve 
him ; his heart shall be poured out, his mind shall be 
troubled. To sin and sorrow his face shall come." One 
fine fragment presents a parallel account to the biblical 
version of the fourth day's work. Another begins with 
saying that the previous creations were '* delightful/^ 
or satisfactory, agreeing with the oft-repeated phrase, 
'' And God saw that it was good.^' 

Babylonian accounts of the solar system give the crea- 
tion of the moon as before the creation of the sun, in 
the reverse order of Genesis, which anticipated the 
modern theory of creation, and makes the sun, the cen- 
tral orb, to have been created before the moon and 
planets which revolve around him. It is a remarkable 
difference, occurring at so early a period. *' In the be- 
ginning arose Hiranyagarbha who established the earth 
and the sky. Who is the god to whom we shall offer 
our sacrifice ? He is alone God above all gods." ('^ Kig- 
Veda,'' X., 121.) Remembering that none of these sacred 
books were written before a.d. 1500, and that for the 
three thousand years previously they were carried in the 
memories of men — near one hundred and fifty-four 
thousand words, more than is contained in the Greek 
language — that these were orally taught the pupil gen- 
eration after generation, it requires a very large measure 
of faith, more than the Christian is expected to possess, 
to believe in the verbal transmission of the ^' Eig- 
Veda,'' that it was not changed in thought and form of 
expression since first sung by the poets. Yet Max 
Muller rejects the Indian' account of the Deluge as being 
derived from the biblical. Now that the Chaldean 
legend confirms both, he must yield his objection. 
There is another point which he must surrender — viz., 



C8 QOD IN CREATION. 

the early accounts that water or chaos was the original 
source from which the world was formed. Thus in Gen- 
esis 1 : 2 it was chaos before the Spirit of God brooded 
upon the face of the waters. Then the chaos of waters 
gaye birth to all."^ ^' The great waters went every where, 
holding the seed and generating the fire, tiience arose 
he who is the sole life of the gods.'^ f This correspond- 
ence suggests a common original. 

The Hindu religion may be classed into belief in 
Three Beyonds : the Beyond of Nature, or belief in God ; 
in '' the Bright ones ;'' the Beyond of life, or belief in 
a world of departed spirits ; but these two had an in- 
dependent origin, and represented different phases or 
development of worship, of which the second was after 
the first ; while the third Beyond was the eternal Law 
of Eight, or " that which makes for righteousness" both 
within us and without. Back of Agni and Indra and 
of all later deities, the old Indian sages believed in 
Atman, who was behind mind and reason, the objective 
Self, the Very Self, the God most God, most dear, the 
Life of life.;]: The religion of Aryan India was in de- 
velopment during fifteen hundred years. First there 
was the worship of one invisible, living, holy God, called 
Varuna ; this declined to reverence for the mere forces 
of nature. There were ancient hymns to Varuna ; and, 
second, to Indra, who appears at times like a mediator 
to them that invoke him. Agni, the fire god, and 
Mitra came afterward ; Varuna holding the first place 
in Vedic worship about B.C. 1500, then Indra from B.C. 

* *' Records of the Past," vol. ix., p. 117. 

t '* Eig-Veda," X., v. 7, Max MiiUer's *' Henotheism," Contem- 
porary Review, November, 1878. See his ** What can India Teach 
Us," Lectures VI., VII. 

J: See Max Miiller's *' What India Can Teach Us," ch. 7. 



GOD m CREATION. 69 

1400 to 1000. Not till a half millennium after Varunan 
supremacy was the worship of ancestors developed by 
the Brahmans. This in fact was a perversion of the 
old Vedic teachings. So Ebrard in *^ Christian Apolo- 
getics/^ vol. ii._, pp. 165 and sub. 

In the use of Divine names there was no authorized 
standard in India. Each large community and local 
centre had their own uses ; the poets took advantage of 
this^ and sung the name or attribute which they pre- 
ferred. Hence what was said of Varuna by one poet 
might by another be ascribed to Indra, to Mitra, or to 
Parganya. Says Max Mliller : " They speak of Mitra, 
Varuna, Agni ; then he is the heavenly bird Garutmat ; 
that which is and is one the poets call in various ways. "* 

Apart from the extent of the Noachian Deluge there 
is the recorded after-sacrifice, when, according to Gen- 
esis, THE Lord smelled a sweet savor, or accepted the 
sacrifice. It is noticeable that the Chaldean version 
gives it in the plural : the gods collected at the sacri- 
fice ; the gods collected [it the good burning ; over the 
sacrifice they gathered."! Here is a variation by 
the inscriber, who expressed the idea in phrase common 
to his polytheism. Says Max Miiller, " That ancient 
theologian who lived in the fifth century B.C., who told 
us that all the gods had been discovered to be but three 
gods, also tells us that in reality there is but one God, 
whom he calls Atman, the self'' {" India," p. 265). 
Probably, as certain Chaldean copyists pluralized cer- 
tain words and deities, so did certain Indian teachers 
of the Veda. Like the Egyptians, they often deified 

* ** Rig Veda," i., 164, 46 ; " Hibbert Lectures, " p. 311 ; 'andia," 
pp. 205, 265, 

f ** Records of the Past," vol. ix., p. 118 ; vii., p. 141. 



70 GOD IN CREATION. 

qualities and actions, which they admired, appreciated, 
and then adored. R. S. Poole holds to the mono- 
theism of early Egypt. See Encyclopaedia Britannica 
and its authorities. 

The prophets were the guardians as well as the writ- 
ers of the Hebrew Scriptures. Tliey preserved the sense 
and meaning as well as the verbal accuracy. Thus in 
Genesis (14 : 14) we read not the ancient name Laish, 
or Leshem (as in Judges 1^ : 14, 27, 29, and Joshua 
19 : 47), but Dan ; a name, however, not given to that 
place till five hundred years afterward. By the prophets 
''imperishable fragments of Israelite poetry and 
prophecy have been borne to us safely on the waves of 
the far-off ocean of primeval history.^' Thus it was 
with the creation narrative and many other records. 

The Chaldean accounts begin with a description of 
the period before the world was created, when only 
chaos or disorder existed, when desolation and darkness 
reigned, and before the work of adornment began. The 
creative work is represented to have been done in stages, 
or periods, as in Genesis, the gods surveying each step 
of the work, and pronouncing it very good, or delightful. 

Moreover, this mundane adornment culminates in the 
formation of man, who, the bricks tell us, was created 
upright and free from evil, and was endowed by the gods 
with the noble faculty of speech. The Deity then de- 
livers a long address to the newly created being, in- 
structing him in all his duties and privileges, pointing 
out the glory of his state. But this happy condition 
does not long continue before man, yielding to tempta- 
tion, falls into wrongdoing. Then the Deity ''pro- 
nounces a terrible curse, invoking upon him all the evils 
which have since afflicted humanity." But Genesis, 
while it relates the fact of man's fall, through the 



GOD IN CREATION, 71 

temptation of a hostile power opposed to God, is grand 
in its brevity and simple outline. Here the bricks and 
cylinders are full of detailed representations. They 
give us a sacred tree ; they place a man and a woman 
on either side of the tree, and portray a serpent the en- 
tire length of the cylinder ! Nor do they stop there, but 
go on and represent cherubim as guarding that tree, 
and then relate a fierce conflict between those cherubim 
and the dragon. They also include the serpent in the 
curse pronounced upon man, he having sinned as well 
as the man, and having caused him to sin ! It is sub- 
stantially the account of Genesis in Chaldea. 

One of the tablets records the sin of Zu, which must 
have been heinous, for it aroused the anger of Bel, and 
caused Anu to call on his sons to slay Zu ; but they, 
instead of killing him, entreated Anu that he should be 
expelled from the company of the gods. It is a legend 
which may have arisen from belief in the fall of the 
angels. 

Quite remarkable is it that among the earliest tradi- 
tions of creation and human existence there should be 
so many which relate to punishment and destruction. 
Very early there was a god of Pestilence, called Lubara, 
who when angry was so destructive that the seven good 
gods were invoked to turn him aside from carrying out 
his purposes. 

An Assyrian copy of an old Babylonian text from the 
library of Cutha gives an ancient Accadian legend of 
destruction, thus : '• Warriors with bodies of birds of 
the desert, men with the faces of ravens, these the great 
gods created. In their wrath they created the city. 
They became strong and numerous — seven kings — 6000 
armies — the evil curse in blood — 120,000 soldiers went 
forth the first year. In the second year 90,000 soldiers ; 



72 GOD m CREATION. 

in the third year 60,700 soldiers — not one returned ; they 
were removed, they were smitten with sickness. The 
foundations of the earth were shaken/' Thus early did 
pestilence and war afflict mankind, through the alleged 
intervention of the gods. This was graphically ex- 
pressed by the Hindus : *' Vast rivers dried up ; moun- 
tains torn up ; the pole itself moved from its place ; the 
cords of the stars rent asunder ; the whole earth itself 
deluged with water ; even angels hurled from their 
stations. '^"^ 

There is also a mythological account of the crea- 
tion, wherein Bel is made to end the rule of the mon- 
sters of chaos by setting the sun, moon, and stars in 
the heavens. Then the evil spirits, emblems of chaos, 
presume to resist these creative changes of Bel, and they 
dare even to make war on the moon, the eldest son or 
creation of Bel. They draw over to their side the sun, 
Venus, and the atmospheric god, Vul. When Bel hears 
of this opposition, he takes advice of Ilea, and then puts 
down the resistance. Thus the cosmos is completed, 
with the moon as the principal orb of the system. 

Genesis, I repeat, corrects this arrangement, and gives 
the sun the central position in our world system. 
Abraham, who observed the courses of the heavenly 
bodies, mav have understood their true relation and de- 
pendence, and so have handed down to his posterity the 
order as given in Genesis. Or Moses and later prophets 
may have been inspired in their narrative and editor- 
ship of the creation records ; but certain it is that no 
yet deciphered bricks of Babylonia agree in this scien- 
tific putting with our biblical account. This makes for 
its independent origin. It is a variation which could 
not have been accidental. 



* From a Pandit in Craufurd's *' India," vol. i., p. 197. 



GOD IJSr CREATION 73 

Providential oversight, or the Divine government 
of the universe, is also very differently put by Baby- 
lonians and Hebrews. The former held that the huge 
monsters generated by chaos, though grotesque and 
powerful, were not necessarily ferocious and destruc- 
tive ; that created by the breath of God, they were 
immortal ; and so by a poetic fancy they transferred 
them to the heavens as guardians of the worlds, in 
order that no harm should arise from collision of the 
revolving spheres in the firmament. Hence too the 
signs of the Zodiac. Says Aratus : '* God Himself 
placed these signs in the Heaven, having set apart the 
stars.'' But the Hebrews ascribed such minute knowl- 
edge to God, that His directing hand was over all His 
works ; calling each byname ; watering the hills, send- 
ing springs into the valleys, causing grass to grow for 
the cattle, and all things for the use of man. (Ps. 104.) 
That God was great indeed, yet He made the small 
drops of rain to distil from the vapors of the clouds, 
and to cause the earth to send forth the bud of the ten- 
der herb. That the sweet influences of Pleiades, the 
courses of the heavens, the guiding of Arcturus with 
his suns, as well as morning and evening, were all the 
ordering and appointments of God.* 

The old historian Damascius says : *' The Babylonians 
speak not of 07ie origin of all things, for they make 
two original beings, whom they call the mother of gods ; 
and that a third race proceeded from them, who had 
three children — Anos, Illinos, and Aos. The son of 
Acs and Dunke was called Belos (a longer form of Bel), 
who they say was the Demiurgus or fabricator of the 
world." In this we see a later hand and cosmic theory. 

* Job, chaps. 36-38. 



74 GOD IN CREATION. 

Again, the first creation tablet informs us that, 
'' When the upper region was not yet called heaven, and 
the lower region was not yet called earth, and the abyss 
had not yet opened its arms, then the chaos of waters 
gave birth to all of them, and the waters were gathered 
into one place. No men yet dwelt together ; no ani- 
mals yet wandered about ; none of the gods had yet 
been born. Then the eldest of the created gods, Lakhma 
and Lakhamu, were born and grew up. Assur and Kis- 
sur were born next, and lived long periods.'' The man 
Asshur may be often mistaken for him. 

The fifth tablet of creation proceeds thus : " He 
constructed dwellings for the great gods. He fixed up 
constellations, whose figures were like animals— the 
chaos monsters transferred as guardians of the skies. 
He made the year. Into four quarters he divided it, 
twelve months he established, with their constellations, 
three by three. And for the days of the year lie ap- 
pointed festivals. He made dwellings for the planets, 
for their rising and setting. And that nothing should 
go amiss, and the course of none should be retarded, 
he placed with them the dwellings of Bel and Hea. 
The repetition of this legend shows the previous ac- 
count not to have been a mistake of the copyist. To 
be sure of safety, he opened the gates on every side ; he 
made strong portals, on the left hand and on the right. 
In the centre he placed the luminaries. The moon he 
appointed to rule the night until the dawn of day. 
Every month without fail he made holy assembly days. 
In the beginning of the month, at the rising of the 
night (in the evening) it (the moon) shot forth its 
horns to illuminate the heavens.'' Just what we see 
at new moon. On the seventh day he appointed a holy 
day, and to cease fro^n all business he commanded. 



GOD IN CREATION. 75 

Then arose the sun in the horizon of heaven in 
(glory). 

While some differences occur in the record, the bricks 
agree with Genesis, that the seventh day — Sabbath — im- 
mediately followed the completion of the cosmos and 
the creation of man. This twofold record of appointed 
days for worship is worthy of special notice. Omitted 
details there are, and repeated essentials of the order of 
creation, of the first sin, of the Sabbath, and of sundry 
commands, quite remarkable. 

But common alike in Egypt, in Chaldea, in Assyria, 
in Palestine, was the idea of a chaos of matter, created 
by Divine power. He spake, and the nebulous, in- 
candescent, shapeless mass of world-origins appeared. 
Such was the ieginning of creation. Then was a pause. 
How long a pause neither legend nor science can tell. 
Then successive steps or stages of development, or, if you 
prefer the word, of evolution from that chaotic mass, to 
a higher and yet more perfect cosmogony, gradually fol- 
lowed ; one, two, three long creative or adorning periods 
— then four, five, six other stages, as some divide them, 
till the whole solar system was completed and beauti- 
fied, when man himself, the crown and culmination of 
the whole, appeared on earth, and was blessed by his 
Maker. The ancient Hindus believed in "" One Su- 
preme first Cause, the universal and eternal Essence, 
which has ever been and ever will continue to be ; who 
pervades and vivifies all things ; who is everywhere 
present, and causes the celestial bodies to revolve in the 
course He has j)rescribed." Again, " There is One Su- 
preme Ruler of the Universe, One Supreme Spirit, dis- 
tant from us, yet near us ; who pervades this whole 
system of worlds, yet is infinitely beyond it. '^* At 

* See Max MiiUer's ^' India," Lecture IV. ; Craufurd's ^^ndia," 
vol. i., pp. 180-190. 



76 GOD m CREATION. 

first He was regarded as existing in Unity, and by in- 
telligent Hindus was so worshipped. In later times this 
belief became modified into a sort of Trinity — Brahma, 
Vishnu, and Siva, or Agni, Indra, and Varuna, in 
order to be better apprehended ; later still, into a 
countless pantheon. But says Professor Monier Wil- 
liams, *^ Hinduism," p. 11, '^ There is but one Being 
(for Brahmins) — no second." Very early the imagina- 
tion of the Hindus led them to personify nature. They 
called the Sun the Illuminator, the Warmer, the Nour- 
isher ; the Moon, the Measurer ; the Dawn, the Awak- 
ener ; the Thunder, the Roarer ; the Fire, the Quick- 
Eunner, etc. Such, in brief, are the legends of the Nile, 
the Euphrates, the Tigris, and of India, in substantial 
accord both as to the origin of matter and the Creative 
Principle, with the authorized narrative in our Bibles. 
Plato would prove from the sun, earth, and stars, and 
from the beautiful arrangement of the seasons, that 
there is a God. So also St. Paul. 



a 



it 



All say that the world was created. 

The Deity is seen in His works." — Aeistotle. 

The Overseer, that dwells in highest heaven, 
He surely knows it, whether He Himself 
Was, or was not, the maker of the whole, 
Or shall we say, that even He knows not ? 



c" 



Some called him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, the 
beautiful-winged heavenly Garutmat, Yama, Mataris- 
van.* The Greek Aratus sang thus : 

*' With Zeus we begin ; we live in Zeus : 
We are his offspring too ; friendly to man, 

'^ Max MiUler, '' Sanskrit Literature," p. 563 ; '' Chips from a 
German Workshop," vol. i., p. 29. 



GOD IN CREATION. 77 

He sets them their toil ; tells when the land 
Must be upturned by ploughshare or by spade — 
What time to plant the olive or the vine — 
What time to fling on earth the golden grain. 
Wherefore men worship Him — the First — the Last — ■ 
Their Father— Wonderful— their Help and Shield."* 

I see no difficulty in accounting for tlie similarity of 
these traditions ; such was the ethnic affinity of Baby- 
lonians and Egyptians, of Hebrews and Assyrians. The 
sons of Ham were Gush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan ; 
whose sons peopled the southern Euphrates, Egypt, 
Ethiopia, and a large part of Palestine. From the 
land of Shinar, in the vale of the Euphrates, went forth 
Asshur, the son of Shem, and founded Nineveh and the 
early Assyrian Empire. Abraham was a descendant of 
Shem, the son of Noah, and his family settled in Ur of 
the Chaldees. Thence they went to Haran in Northern 
Syria, from whence Abraham migrated to Canaan, and 
found fiye of its princes paying tribute to Chedorlaomer, 
of the southern Euphrates, who was aided by certain 
allied chiefs of that region. 

Already there appears to have been some commercial 
intercourse between Western Asiatics, Babylonians, He- 
brews, and Egyptians. Abraham, as well as Jacob, went 
down into Egypt. Its people fought against their kins- 
men, Arabians and Cushites against Assyrians and He- 
brews. The plain country was the ancient battle-ground, 
and in later times Medes, Persians, and Greeks were 
successive combatants. From the days of Nimrod to 
Mahomet Western Asia was the arena of bloody con- 
flicts. A common family origin, commercial intercourse 
and traffic, even literary and scientific communion, did 

* Aratus, ** Pha3nomena," vol. ii., lines, 1-15, by Prof, Rawlin- 
son ; compare Is. 28 : 23-29 ; Isaiah four centuries before Aratus. 



78 OOD m CBEATION. 

not prevent national hostility. But the fact of such 
early relationship explains agreement in ideas, tradi- 
tions, legends, and verbal expressions. The twelve 
hundred years from the Deluge to Abraham did not 
prevent his grandfathers from talking with the grand- 
sons of Shem. 

Those ancient legends, therefore, represent a common 
belief, originating from a common source, narrating 
the same accepted facts of world origins, and teaching 
the same ideas of creation and of providence. They 
were the heritage of a common ethnic relationship. The 
variations are neither great nor surprising. This ex- 
plains their extent and agreement. They were the 
original beliefs of the early races of mankind. Modern 
speculation cannot overturn the facts of universal his- 
tory. The revelations of the spade confirm the revela- 
tion of God. Chaldean bricks stultify modern guesses. 
Those inscribed records of the past in bricks, on cylin- 
ders, in bas-reliefs ; in Egypt, on the Tigris and the 
Euphrates, and the classic period of India confirm and 
illustrate Moses and the prophets. Nor can they be 
explained away without also eliminating and exscind- 
ing the common-sense and common history of almost 
universal mankind. 

No recent mutterings of half savage men, of Bongo 
and Wedda, of Samoan and Indian, can set aside those 
indisputable records — records which have recently come 
to light. They remove doubts where doubt existed ; 
they nullify unattested speculation ; they scatter mod- 
ern guesses. They present a history of creation, resting 
upon the pillars of monumental knowledge and the 
original belief of mankind. They teach a God as the 
Creator of all other beings and of all things and the 
appointed days for His worship. It was lie who first 



OOD m CREATION, 79 

taught man his duty, and gave him His blessing, and 
watched over him by His Providence. Abel and Seth, 
Enoch and Noah, worshipped Him. Isaac in the field 
meditated upon Him. Jacob at Bethel, confident in 
Him, could sleep under the open sky with no fear of 
ghost or spectre. Not doubting Moses, we yet wish to 
know what Egypt and her contemporaries believed and 
taught, what Nimrod and Abraham said and did touch- 
ing God and His worship, and touching the men who 
were before them. If they tell us of One God, One only 
whom thev believed in and adored, should we not extol 
Him as before and higher than heroes, and worship Him 
on His appointed days — Him as the Divine Architect, 
Instructor, and Lord ? Speculation can no more change 
His character than it can change gravitation or the 
courses of suns and seasons. Yet the mercury at 40° 
below zero may suggest dififerent thoughts of Him than 
the warm zephyrs of a summer's day ; but He is the 
same Being in the summer and winter of the world and 
of souls — creating, vivifying, preserving, overruling. 
There is, there can be, but one true theology, however 
men of different ages may understand it. Man in- 
deed changes, but God remains the same forever. 



lY. 



LEGENDS ABOUT SATAN AND EVIL 

SPIRITS. 

Some question whether there is a devil among men 
now, whether his former domain has not been rescued 
from his power, and himself conquered and overthrown — 
in short, whether belief in him is not of the past. All 
the ancients Avho believed in a God also believed in a 
devil. All who believed in a Supreme Good Being, the 
Creator and Benefactor of mankind, also believed in a 
powerful Principle of Evil which corrupted, and in- 
jured, and destroyed. He was a being of vast talents 
and resources, a skilful strategist, of untiring activities, 
and sovereign in his realm of evil. He possessed very 
large attainments, and of his efficiency there was no 
doubt. To cope with him was to combat with a mas- 
ter, and the strongest would find him a mighty antag- 
onist. Hence the conflict between Bel and the Dragon, 
between St. Michael and Satan. The Benevolent Crea- 
tor, it was believed, had made the world, but a malevolent 
devil sought to possess and dominate it. He caused the 
noxious vapors, the pestilence, everything injurious to 
mankind, death itself. 

1. According to Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hebrew 
traditions, an Evil Being existed long before the crea- 
tion of man. He was upright and loyal to the Great 
Supreme when originally created by Him. He joined 



GOD IN CREATION, 81 

in the worsliip of Heaven and in extolling the Divine 
Majesty ; but at length he rebelled against Him, and 
tried to usurp His throne and government. In that re- 
bellion he is said to have seduced and enticed a thou- 
sand other spirits to apostatize and unite with him. 
The legend relates that the hosts of Heaven were assem- 
bled and singing the praises of the Creator, when a re- 
volt suddenly occurred. The Divine Being thrice 
announced the commencement of a Psalm ! The god 
of holy songs, the great choirmaster of Heaven's wor- 
shif), seated a thousand singers and musicians, and 
established a choral band, who to his hymn were to re- 
spond in multitudes. But with a loud cry of contempt 
the rebels broke up his holy song. Such spoiling and 
confusion confounded the praises of those who contin- 
ued to sing. Then the God of the bright crown sum- 
moned His adherents as soon as the rejoicing ceased. 
And the rebels uttered curses and imprecations upon 
them and upon their Creator. But in His wrath He 
sounded a trumpet blast which would awaken the dead, 
and drove them from His presence. He sent the rebels 
to those gods who were His enemies. The ancient Hin- 
dus believed that angels had been hurled from their 
stations.* The sixteenth creation tablet goes on to say 
that in their stead He created man ; that the first who 
received life dwelt long with Him. It also contains a 
prayer that He would give them strength never to neg- 
lect His word, or (mark the expression) follow the ser- 
pent's voice ! And may the god of divine speech expel 
from his five thousand good spirits (the number of 
angels said to have been originally created) the one 

* See Craufurd's " India," vol. i., p. 197 ; '* Records of the 
Past/' vol. v., pp. 163-G6. 
4* 



82 QOD m CREATION, 

tliousand wicked ones who in the midst of the heavenly 
song had shouted their evil blasphemies ! And the 
record narrates how the god Asshur, the tutelary deity 
of Assyria, had witnessed the malice of those who re- 
belled against their Divine allegiance, and refused to go 
forth with them, or to countenance their disaffection 
and apostasy.* Thenceforth their leader is represented 
as a *' dragon,'' and was so named by the Babylonians. 
He was the offspring of Tiamat, who was produced by 
chaos ; with the Egyptians he was the offspring of 
Saturn, and named Typho. But all alike considered 
him to be the Evil One, essentially evil and an all- 
worker for evil, the panourgos, Ttarovpyo^. His birth- 
day was inauspicious, and no one would transact any 
business upon it. It was a banned day in the calendar. 
2. But wicked as Typho was, he found a mate, and 
married his sister Nephthys, a being more to be feared 
than loved, who reigned in Hades. Typho was an 
early mischief-maker, who caused trouble among the 
celestials, by stirring up jealousy, anger, and strife. 
Whereupon Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, engaged 
him in battle, and took him prisoner. Yet even then 
Isis had pity upon him and interposed by setting him 
free. Again the conflict was renewed, and Horus con- 
quered, but did not utterly destroy him. This strug- 
gle between the good and evil of the world, between the 
Good Principle and the Evil Principle, was to be long 
and terrible. It symbolized, as some thought, the 
operations of nature, the movement of the heavenly 
bodies, the changing seasons, summer and winter. But 
others, with much reason, reject all symbolism and typi- 
cal representation, and regard Typho as an early exist- 

* "Records of the Past," vol. vii., pp. 127, 128. 



GOD IN CREATION 83 

ent and independent Evil Principle, who became the 
author of wickedness on the earth, as he had been the 
author of rebellion in Heaven ; who afflicted our world 
with corruption, disease, and death, in malicious oppo- 
sition to the Good Being who was the Author and Be- 
stower of life and blessedness.* 

Of old time as now, men may have attributed to the 
devil more than was his due. If the sun shone too hot, 
if there was a drought or a destructive fire, they 
charged it against Typho. And if it was too cold or 
too wet, if the Red Sea or the Mediterranean became 
tempestuous and damaged their merchandise or their 
ships, they charged it against Typho. All that was bad 
in nature was attributed to him, while all that w^as good 
was credited to another. Yet Typho was not the sun 
nor his orbit ; he was not fire nor water ; he was not 
drought nor destruction ; he was not famine nor pesti- 
lence ; but all the evils proceeding from these were al- 
leged against him. He had a bad reputation. 

Moreover, he had a poor emblem. The common em- 
blem for Typho among the Egyptians was an ass, and 
a red one at that. Some mirth-makers used to play on 
trumpets to represent his braying and to turn him into 
ridicule. The old Copts long had a custom of assem- 
bling at a certain time, and with great ado and cere- 
monious mimicry — like our college boys burying a hated 
text- book — they paraded a poor brute of an ass about 
their towns, and then led him to a precipice, over which 
they threw him headlong, in order to destroy him ! 
He was regarded as an unclean animal, the hated alike 
of gods and men. Yet because of Typho's power, he 
was feared, and sacrifices of propitiation were offered 

* Sir G. WiUsinsQn's '' Egypt ;" Kenrick, ii., p. 352. 



84 ODD IN CllEATION, 

him. This arose in part from a latent thought or feel- 
ing among men that Typho might not be altogether 
bad, that good and evil cannot be wholly separated in 
this world, and hence there might be something of 
good even in the devil. But Ormazd^ and Ahriman (the 
principle of good and of evil in the sj^stem of Zoroaster) 
were eternally opposed and oppugnant to each other. 
However, if bad seasons, bad luck, disasters, eclipses, 
and all evil portents were to be ascribed to Typho, was 
he not a being of such tremendous powers that he ought 
to be propitiated by prayer and sacrifice ? Thus it came 
to pass that in some parts of Egypt temj)les were erect- 
ed to him, but after the eighteenth to the twentieth 
dynasty his worship was often neglected, and in later 
times his figure was erased from the sculptures. 

Where he was not thus feared and adored, he was 
hated, and his emblem was abhorred. The red ass, the 
hippopotamus, the crocodile, the bear— all representa- 
tives of Typho — are not such winsome creatures as to 
evoke other feelings than dislike and aversion. Indeed, 
Egyptian aversion went so far as to include all red- 
haired persons, who became objects of dislike and con- 
tempt, simply because of their color-resemblance to 
Typho. They could, however, retreat to those towns 
where the god they symbolij^ed was held in honor.* 

In the time of Plutarch, as he himself tells us, there 
was shown at Hermopolis a statue of Typho in the form 
of a hippopotamus with a hawk upon its back fighting 
with a serpent. It suggested how powerful, how vio- 
lent, how annoying he might be to mankind. And he 
is supposed to have had some relation to the god of sor- 
row and death, of death caused by violence. 

* Sir G. Wilkinson ; Kenrick. 



ODD IN CREATION. 85 

There is a notable difference between Eg'vptian ideas 
of the devil and those of many moderns : they thought 
Typho's influence and domination ended upon earthy 
where, though he might vex mankind ever so much, his 
activity ceased, and another god was believed to have 
the charge of Hades and hell. Typho could not enter 
there ! Yet there Christians regard Satan as supremely 
sovereign, the despot and the tyrant of the condemned. 

3. As to Chaldean legends and traditions of the Evil 
One, modern discoveries show that they are numerous 
and explicit. The bricks and cylinders of Babylonia 
abound with inscriptions and representations of him. 
They show him as a rebel in Heaven, plotting evil, with- 
holding the worship due to the Supreme God ; again as 
one of the monsters born of chaos, the offspring of 
Tiamat, the opposer of eosmical adornment ; he is por- 
trayed as a *' dragon," and so named ; he is the pow- 
erful antagonist of Bel. 

Assyrian tablets give a description of the period be- 
fore creation, when only chaos existed and huge mon- 
sters were generated in it. They tell us of the forma- 
tion of the world and the fall of man, and the fall of 
the celestial being who corresponds both to Satan and 
to Typho. And they describe the ^wickedness of the 
Serpent and the Dragon's rebellion against the Supreme 
God. The aspiring angel is represented as riding in a 
chariot through celestial space, surrounded by the 
storms, with the lightnings playing about him, and him- 
self hurling the thunderbolts. A Cutha tablet speaks 
of him as lord of the lower regions and lord of earth, 
buc agreeing with the Egyptian idea, not as lord of 
Hades. Ninkigal or Allat reigned there. 

Chaldeans believed the Evil One, or the Dragou, to be 
the author of sin in man and of evil to him. He was 



86 OOD IN CREATION. 

the great producer of mischief ; the spirit of disorder as 
opposed to the creative God who had made all things 
delightful. As the cause of disobedience and apostasy 
in Heaven and on earth, the Dragon was included in the 
curse of man's fall. The struggle for his expulsion 
from Heaven is very strikingly portrayed. One almost 
wishes that Milton could have read the graphic descrip- 
tion. Not to Genesis but to the Apocalypse must we 
turn for a similar account. It was a determined con- 
flict between the four legions of Heaven under Bel and 
the thousand rebel angels under the Dragon. He fought 
against the gods. By a mere change of names the 
records upon the burned bricks which were inscribed in 
Babylonia some two thousand years before the Christian 
Scriptures were written, and had been buried out of 
sight five hundred years previously, agree with those 
Scriptures in what they relate of the celestial war led by 
Michael against the Dragon. Thus we read : ^^ Spirits 
were in rebellion on the same day in the lower part of 
Heaven, causing evil work, devising with wicked heads 
— seven of them represented by seven wild and ferocious 
animals. The flying clouds of Heaven surrounded 
them, the downpour of the skies, a violent wind, an evil 
wind, and the tempest began. From the surface of 
Heaven like lightning they darted ; descending to the 
abyss of waters they came down. In the wide heavens 
of the god Anu evil they set up, and an opponent they 
had not. But Bel heard of the matter, and it sank into 
his heart. He prepared for the conflict flaming swords, 
brandishing lightnings, curved cimeters, and a sword 
which turned four ways. With a strong sabre, with the 
bolt of his father Anu, a whirling thunderbolt, a bolt 
with double flames, like forked lightnings, impossible to 
extinguish, a quadruple bolt, a septuple bolt, and a bolt 



GOD IN CREATION, 87 

of worked fire, Bel shot at the Dragon, and raised his 
great sword against him. Then the Dragon attacked 
the just Prince of the gods. Fiercely they joined in 
trial of battle ; the king drew his sword and dealt rapid, 
blows ; then he seized his whirling thunderbolt, and 
looked well behind and before him, waiting for an op- 
portunity to deal a fatal blow. When the Dragon 
opened his mouth to swallow him, he hurled the bolt 
into it, before he could shut his lips. The blazing 
lightnings poured into his inside, and accomplished 
their work. Bel pulled out the heart, rent open the 
mouth ; he drew his falchion and cut open the body. 
Thus Bel took vengeance on the Dragon, and destroyed 
him. Over this victory he greatly rejoiced, for he scat- 
tered the allies abroad, and they retreated and dispersed. 
Their weapons he broke up ; in mountain heaps they 
lay about. The flaming thunderbolt had done its work ; 
the flaming sword did its work. It dealt rapid blows 
which none could escape, and it turned to the South, it 
turned to the North, it turned to the East, and it turned 
to the West. '^ It recalls the flaming sword of Genesis 
3:^4, which allowed none to approach the tree of life, 
and none to return from banishment.* 

SPIRITS OF EVIL. 

4. It is quite noteworthy that after the victory of Bel 
and his destruction of the Dragon there yet remained 
active powers of evil on the earth. We find some Chal- 
dean legends that still regard an Evil Spirit as the cause 
and source of all that was bad in man. Thus Zoroaster 



* Compare chaps. 12 and 20 of the Apocalypse ; Chaldean Ac- 
count, pp. 102-112 ; •• Records of the Past," vol. ix., pp. 137-39. 



88 GOD IN CREATION. 

and the Manichasans taught of Ahriman and Demiur- 
gus, whom they made the representative of all evil, the 
Wicked Being who was eternally opposed to the Good 
Being. 

But in the celestial revolt the narrative from the 
bricks of Babylon makes a thousand created spirits to 
have apostatized, assigning to them seven leaders, of 
whom the Dragon was chief, and who under that name 
was killed by Bel. Examination of the different trans- 
lations shows that the meaning of the inscriptions on 
the tablets is much the same, one being rendered a lit- 
tle more intensively than the other. Thus one trans- 
lator has destructive tempests, and '' meteors'' for light- 
nings, and makes the rage of the combatants to ignite 
the thunderbolts. There is no doubt of the general 
correctness of the translation, nor of the genuineness 
of the records. They are as authentic as Caesar^s ' ' Gallic 
Wars. " Another tablet sets forth the peace and harmony 
which prevailed before the rebellion, like that repre- 
sented in the Book of Job, when the morning stars sang 
together, and all the sons or angels of God rejoiced. 
Jude also refers to a period before that of the fall from 
the first estate of purity and blessedness. Both in the Bi- 
ble and on Chaldean bricks -there are many spirits of 
evil. Similarly in Egypt, Typho was not utterly de- 
stroyed. The Evil Principle still existed. Under the 
names of Tiamat, Dragon, Satan, Typho, Ahriman, 
Demiurgus, etc., it was believed in by all, and it was 
felt by all. It tempted by lying insinuations, that man 
would become as gods. By hnozving evil, it was not to 
be supposed that he would be dominated by it as its 
slave. Babylonians invoked the powers of Heaven, in 
order to be delivered from earthly spells and evil 
spirits. Their legends tell us that the evil curse, like 



GOD m CBEATION. 89 

a demon, fixes on a man ; that a raging voice was fixed 
upon him. Indeed, it required more than human pow- 
ers to break the spell, and Bel Mirodach was sent to 
remove it. Like a torn fl.ag should it be torn ; it 
should be burned in consuming flames. It should be 
expelled, and its victim restored to freedom. Such 
spells are frequently found described on the bricks, with 
suitable invocations for removing them. Spirits of 
Heaven were invoked against the spirits of earth. Bel 
Mirodach was the local god who opposed them, who 
cured the ills they caused, and sought to deliver men 
from their power and influence. He went about doing 
good. 

5. An old Accadian poem, not later than the time of 
Jacob, reads : ^' fire god, those seven how were they 
born, how grew they up ? Those seven in the moun- 
tain of the sunset were born ! Those seven in the 
mountain of the sunrise grew up ! In the hollows of 
the earth have they their dwelling. On the high places 
of the earth are they proclaimed. . . . Immense is 
their habitation. But no name in Heaven or on earth 
have they. Seven they are : in the mountain of the 
sunset do they rise. Seven they are : in the mountain of 
the sunset did thev set. Into the hollow places of the 
earth do they penetrate. On the high places of the 
earth did they ascend. As for them, goods they have 
not ; in Heaven and earth they are not known by 
name." Another version continues the theme : 
" Those seven in the earth were born ; those seven in 
the earth grew up. Seven they are, seven are they. 
In the channel of the deep seven are they. In the 
radiance of Heaven seven are they. In the channel of 
the deep, in a palace grew they up. Male they are 
not, female they are not. In the winds of the deep are 



90 QOB IN CREATION. 

their paths. Wives they have not, sons they have not. 
Order and kindness know they not. Prayer and sup- 
plication hear they not. Baleful are they, baleful they. 
Seven are they, seven are they, seven twice over again 
are they.'' 

Thus early was seven a perfect number among the 
Accadians, and inscribed upon the bricks some cen- 
turies before Moses legislated for the Hebrews. In the 
poem the order of sex is transposed ; but the Accadians 
mentioned the female before the male, either from re- 
spect or from their ideas of the order of creation. Thus 
they thought the moon was created before the sun. 
Singular, too, while they attributed the relation of sex 
to the gods, they withheld it from the spirits, good and 
bad. Sometimes they invoked both alike, thus : 

** May the spirits of Heaven remember, 
May the spirits of earth remember."* 

Thus too the old Hindus : 

** O M, remember me, divine Spirit ! 
O M, remember my deeds." 

6. Moreover, those ancients believed that the world 
was swarming with noxious spirits. Besides the thou- 
sand fallen angels, they reckoned there were three hun- 
dred spirits of Heaven and six hundred spirits of earth. 
These nine hundred took interest in the affairs of man- 
kind, and were to be invoked on fitting occasions. 
But we must not confound them with the seven wicked 
spirits who heard neither prayer nor supplication. The 
wild chant about them touched the deepest religious 
feelings of old Babylonians, who seemed to cherish a 

* ''Records of the Past," vol. ix., pp. 143-148; Oraufurd' s 
*andia," vol. i., p. 192. 



ODD IN CREATION. 91 

peculiar sympathy for them. Still they dreaded them ; 
for '' they might cause that a man's corn should not be 
high, and that the sun should not be genial to him !" * 
As before said, they attributed all the ills which afflict 
humanity to evil spirits, and their records show what a 
deep lodgment this notion had found among them. 
It is there inscribed as emphatically as in the Book of 
Job, what destruction spirits of evil might exert upou 
man. They could destroy his property, his children, 
his health, leaving him nothing but ruins — a diseased 
body, a wrecked fortune, a forgotten name. Hence 
devil-worship. Hence prayer and invocation that the 
good spirits would interpose and deliver men from all 
evil spells, from ill fortune, and the secret machinations 
of the wicked. Then it was Bel against the Dragon, 
now it is Jesus Christ against Satan. 

Regard tiiese legends as we may, they have come 
down to us with other evidences of what was thought 
and believed four thousand years ago, and by others 
than Hebrews. Hamites, Semites, Aryans, so believed 
in active spirits of evil. Our Lord alone taught and fore- 
told their utter overthrow. In St. Luke (10 : 17-19) we 
read of the Seventy returning with joy, and saying to 
Him, *^ Even the demons are subject unto us through 
Thy name.'^ And He said unto them, '* I beheld 
Satan as lightning fall from Heaven. I give you au- 
thority over all the power of the enemy ; and nothing 
shall by any means hurt you.'^ This is the triumph of 
Jesus Christ over wickedness and all spirits of evil. 
** And the devil that deceived shall be cast out, held 
and bound, tormented day and night, and his angels 
cast out with him/' (Rev., chaps. 12 and 20.) It goes 

* «« Records of the Past," vol. i., p. 135 ; vol. iii., pp. 143-48. 



02 GOD IN CREATION.] 

farther than any Eastern legends, declaring the utter 
downfall of the chief and his whole army. All who 
were expelled for rebellion from the abode of the celes- 
tials are forever prohibited from returning, unless we 
adopt the hope of Origen, that after long ages of pun- 
ishment even the devil and his angels may be restored 
to fellowship with the holy angels.* But even so, they 
are not restored as victors, but as penitents who con- 
fessed their sin, and submitted themselves to their 
Lord, To whom every knee shall bow, of those in 
Heaven, and those in earth, and those under the earth — 
i,e.j those in Hades (Philip. 2 : 10). To compare such 
authenticated legends with modern notions of witch- 
craft among African, Indian, and Sea Island tribes, in 
order to illustrate the absurdity of the original belief, 
is illogical and unhistorical. The character of that be- 
lief does not affect its antiquity, and so ought not to 
affect its credibility. Clearly it did not arise in Egypt 
and Chaldea from any fears of departed heroes, bene- 
factors, or criminals. With freedom and accountability 
given them, all spiritual beings were as free to fall in 
Heaven as upon earth, in Egypt and India as in Baby- 
lon and Palestine. The inscriptions cannot ie erased. 
They teach the fact of a Hades or infernal regions as 
explicitly as the Bible, and they name the goddess 
who presided there. The remarkable legend of Istar's 
descent thither may have prepared for the descent of 
Orpheus after his beloved Eurydice. It was the oppo- 
site of that place of delight to which Anat and lau 
would transport the just, and for which good Babylo- 
nians prayed. * 

* Plump tre's "Spirits in Prison," p. 144; Bampton Lectures 
for 1886, pp. 230-234. 



CONCLUSION. 

Thus we have found *^ streams of tendency/^ yea, 
streams of history, which run back to one common 
source or origin, Avhich fully exjilain man's belief of 
God in Creation and in Worship, and how he was in- 
cited or instructed so to believe and worship. Some 
Being has ever governed the world in righteousness and 
administered true judgment to His people. Applying 
the canon of Ewald and of common-sense, we find that 
the simple is first, the complex and multiform later. 
The testimony of mankind concerning this matter must 
be received. Noah and Nimrod, Abraham and Mel- 
chisedec, Jethro and Moses, by their example and 
lessons, voice the facts of early times, and are corrobo- 
rated by the history of primitive nations. We admit an 
early tendency to corruption in religion. Man never 
was a perfect being ; at his best he was without experi- 
ence. Yet after travelling two thousand miles Abra- 
ham found those in Egypt and in Palestine whose rule 
of ethics was equal to his own. But his historic posi- 
tion and character are admitted by men who doubt 
other matters. The character and position of Mel- 
chisedec are also established, though we ignore for a 
time his theanthropic and Messianic relations. He was 
the priest-king of Salem, the capital of the Jebusites, 
until David took it and called it Jerusalem.* But in 
the time of the patriarch it was named Salem, its prince 

* Josh. 15 : 63 ; Judges 1 : 21 ; 2 Sam. 5 : 7, 8. 



94 GOD IN CREATION, 

and chief was called " priest of El-Eliun/' the just or 
rigliteous One among that people, and by St. Paul 
** King of Righteousness.'' It was an exalted title. 

If he had any dealings with the neighboring Phoeni- 
cians, he may have found others who worshipped the 
true God. They were not originally the cruel religion- 
ists they subsequently became. According to Professor 
Rawlinson, ^' the Phoenicians began with the monotheis- 
tic idea, whether that idea originated in their own 
hearts or was impressed upon them from without by 
revelation. Possibly their several names for Deity may 
have been only different epithets of the Most High, 
expressing His attributes of inscrutability and omnis- 
cience."* Even the feminine forms of those names 
among Semites ''were intended only to express the 
energy or the collective powers of the Deity, not a sepa- 
rate being, least of all a wife." f Sadyk, or the last two 
syllables of Melchisedec's name, is said to designate the 
god who personified the Divine Justice. This may be 
another reason for concluding that the Jebusite was 
originally a worshipper of the Most High. Even at the 
time of the covenant with Abraham the supernal vision 
told him that the iniquity of the Amorite was not yet 
full (Gen. 15 : 16, 21). So we may infer that the 
priest-king was as really a worshipper of Jehovah as 
the patriarch, although the Jebusites latterly became 
idolaters (2 Sam. 5 : 6). We may indeed marvel that 
the Hebrews during their four hundred years in Egypt 
and that Jethro and Moses during the adverse surround- 
ings of their position still retained such a regard and 
attachment for the God of Abraham. While revelation 
can, the theory of evolution cannot explain it. 

* '' Religions Ancient World," pp. 102-3. 

\ Max Miiller, '' Science of Religion/' p. 183. 



GOD m CREATION, 95 

Finally, the monotheistic idea of Creation and of 
Worship found significant expression in the sacrifice of 
animals. Why else should you kill a creature of God 
in order to please or propitiate Him ? Why enjoin a 
certain time for sacrifice — every seventh day of the 
month — among Babylonians and Hebrews, Egyptians 
and Peruvians ? On the hills of Palestine and of Persia 
men prayed and sacrificed to God for long ages without 
priest or temple. Again and again they attempted to 
account for the evil of the world, and to atone for and 
extirpate it. Only by supernal agency could they have 
known of the fall of angels in Heaven ; yet we find 
similar explanation of fallen angels on the Euphrates 
and the Jordan, spirits of evil in Egypt and in Elam. 
M. Lenormant, who confessedly is learned in such 
legends, says : " The analogy between these myths and 
the Bible narrative is striking indeed. They are really 
one and the same tradition. The inspired author of 
Genesis took it up under the form that it had evidently 
retained among the Hebrews, and made it the occasion 
of a solemn lesson. A painted vase of Phoenician work- 
manship of the seventh or sixth century B.C., discovered 
by General di Cesnola, ^* represents a leafy tree, from the 
branches of which hang two large clusters of fruit ; a 
great serpent approaches the tree and rears itself to 
seize the fruit. ^^ * Spirits expelled from Heaven were 
believed to possess the earth before the creation of man, 
whom they early sought to seduce from the path of duty 
to rebellion against their Maker. Their number matters 
not, but there was a legion of them, with a chief. A 
place was prepared for them and for wicked and dis- 
obedient men. For the good and obedient there was a 

* Contemporary Review for September, 1879. 



96 GOD IN CREATION. 

place of blessedness, a fitting counterpart of Gehenna ; 
believed in substantially by all ancient peoples : Baby- 
lonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians^ Aryan Indians 
and Greeks. Man's Creator became his teacher, his 
punisher for doing wrong, and his rewarder for doing 
right. The good, the heroic, the benefactor secured 
the eternal enjoyment of Heaven^ where night never 
came and friends never failed. '^Like a bird (they 
prayed) may the soul fly to a lofty place ! To the holy 
hands of God may it ascend. May his soul shine radi- 
ant. Lord of light, the man who serves his God, Thou 
wilt grant him an abode of happiness/^ * 

"Where King Vaivaswata reigns, where the secret place of heaven 

is, 
"Where the mighty waters are, there make me immortal. 

" Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, 
Where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal. 

# 
*' Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun 

is, 

Where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal. 

' ' Where there is eternal light, in the place where Varuna dwells, 
Where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me im- 
mortal. " f 



* " Records of the Past," vol. iii., pp. 134 and 138. 
f G. Smith's "Chaldean Account;" "Records of the Past," 
vol. i., pp. 143-4.9 ; vol. ix., pp. 161-62 ; *' Chips," vol. i., 13. 46. 



V. 



DELUGE LEGENDS. 

CONTENTS : Deluge Legends. — The Cause and the Catasteophe. 
— Threefold Testimony of Hamites, Shemites, and Japhites : 
Gbeeks, Hindus, Germans, and Scandinavians : Opinions of 
M. Lenormant and Others : Tacitus ant) the German Tribes 
vs. Herbert Spencer : Testimony of Lactantius : Gibbon vs. 
St. Tertullian : Small Significance of Roman Deification. — 
Proposal of Tiberius to Enroll Christus among the Gods. 
— His Deification the Logic of History. 

A WORLD of words has been written touching the 
truth of Noah's Dehige. But all speculation and 
science must yield to established facts of history. In- 
deed, science is not science when oppugnant to facts. 
The first consideration about the Deluge is, upon what 
grounds do we believe the record and the catastrophe ? 
None of us remember the occurrence, while all of us 
may read the account of it. Is that account credible ? 
Is it the creation of the imagination of ancient poets ? 
As an early historic record it is credible, though differ- 
ent from ordinary occurrences. It is a marvel of 
marvels that its essential details could have been re- 
counted and recorded as we find them, if the original 
event was only a poetic fantasy or a huge thunder- 
storm ! A real deluge, however destructive, is scientifi- 
cally credible. All history is possible ; true history is 
credible. There can be no antecedent improbability in 
such a case. Just as there was no antecedent improb- 
ability against our late war, terrible and unfraternal as 
it proved, so, I ask, were not the Noachian Deluge and 
the War for the Union of our American States equally 
6 



98 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

probable from antecedent considerations ? Surely God 
could as easily drown men into right living as Americans 
could fight their brethren into friendship ! 

Let us put it after the style of an old myth : Ages 
ago there were thirteen brothers, who lived in unity 
and amity for a long time. They prospered, and per- 
formed exploits. A distant but strong nation tried to 
oppress and enslave them. The brothers resisted, and 
fought against all who were sent to subdue them, and 
after long wars they triumphed. Again they lived in 
peace and prosperity, and did wondrously for genera- 
tions. They grew to be thirty-three strong brothers, 
with sisters, wives, and children ; were admired or 
feared by all other peoples for their prowess. But, lo ! 
a third part of these brothers said, We will not regard the 
wishes of our other brothers. We will resume our per- 
sonal rights, and the property acquired by all for joint 
use shall be divided among us. There shall be two 
nations. We will set up for ourselves, and do as we 
please. But, then, the other two parts said, No ; you 
shall continue to be one nation with us, and do as we 
do, and share in what we have. Yet to this they would 
not agree, but made war, and fought the two parts hard 
and long, and were finally overcome. 

This brief putting of our national history is not far 
from the truth, but it reveals an antecedent improb- 
ability that it could be true. The experience of the 
original thirteen should haye led the thirty-three to 
consider, to recollect themselves, and comply with 
reasonable conditions of union. At least the eleven 
should not have been •so self-determined and defiant, 
where so many others were equally concerned. 

Precisely so was it with the antediluvians. They 
were self-willed, reckless, and would not consider their 



DELUGE LEGENDS. 99 

duty to God, and do as He required. So He fought 
against them with the elements of nature, and drowned 
them with a flood of waters. But He also forewarned 
them of what He would do. For a long while Noah 
preached repentance and reformation to them. This 
illustrates the a priori probability to be as likely in one 
case as in the other. It is just as reasonable that there 
should have been a drowned world of mankind because 
of their wickedness, as that there should be a civil war 
in America for preservation of the Union. 

ISTow, the Deluge is represented in the Bible and other 
ancient Kecords to have been as a punishment for the sin 
of man. That was its cause — the chastisement of the sin- 
ners. In Chapter IV. of this little book the origin of sin 
is ascribed to the self-will and rebellion of spirits in 
heaven. They sinned, were expelled, and then came to 
earth to induce men to sin. But whatever the origin 
of evil, men have felt its power within them, and have 
seen its effects outside of them. Many have been 
appalled at the spectacle. St. Paul puts it excellently 
in Eomans 6 and 7. 

Personal misfortune, broken faith, domestic calamity, 
suicide, the battle-fields of the world, are but the out- 
come of sin in man and of evil in the nations. Attempt 
to explain it as we may, we are obliged to acknowledge 
its existence, its destructive forces, and its oppugnancy 
to mankind. Amid all the good in man since time 
began, he has ever been subject to evil, and at times 
has been dominated by it. Often and again an Abel 
has found his Cain. If a goddess has presided over 
human birth, a goddess haJNalso cut the thread of 
human life. Clotho has ever been followed by a 
Nemesis ! To be born was sure warrant of death. To 
be capable of large enjoyment was also to be liable to 



100 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

sorrow and suJffering ; and the larger one's capacity the 
larger might be one's joy or grief, perhaps each in alter- 
nation. Now, whence this twinship of goud and evil ? 
From God ? Yes, in the sense of His permitting it ; 
no, in the sense of His causing it. So wise men have 
long believed. The Bible and the Inscriptions so teach. 
Already we have considered how the Evil Being became 
evil ; how he rebelled against Heaven, and then plotted 
against man. Failing in his wicked attempt to usurp 
Jehovah's throne, he would corrupt and dominate the 
earth, and curse the man whom God had blessed. Thus 
he caused man to sin, and for persisting in wrong-doing 
God destroyed the sinner. 

This was a fact of such vast importance in human 
history that records and intimations of it are well-nigh 
universal. Consider : the sons of Noah were Shem, 
Ham, and Japheth ; the sons of Ham were Cush, 
Mizraim, Phut, Canaan, who became Accadians, early 
Babylonians, Egyptians, Palestinians, etc. The sons 
of Shem were Asshur, Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and 
Aram, whose families became Assyrians, Elamites, 
Hebrews, Lydians, Phoenicians, etc. From Japheth 
descended the Medes and Hindus, Iranians and settlers 
in Western Asia Minor, the islands of the Archipelago 
and the Mediterranean, with its western coasts, as well 
as Greece, Italy, and even as far as Britain ; while 
Gauls, Germans, and Scandinavians came from across 
the continent. That early confederation mentioned in 
Genesis 14 may have included representatives of all 
Noah's sons. Chedorlaomer was a Semitic Elamite, 
Arioch of EUasar was ^iumkaa^sssaa:, Amraphel a Haniite 
of Shinar, and Tidal the Aryan king of nations. For 
twelve years this confederation held the Southern Pales- 
tinians tributary. Whether it also represented the four 




DELTIQE LEGENDS, 101 

tongues or nations ascribed to the Babylonian peoples 
in cuneiform inscriptions we do not know, but the con- 
federacy shows how naturally its different members 
might have much in common of tribal affection, tribal 
usages, and tribal knowledge. Easily might their 
grandfathers have conversed with the grandsons of 
!Noah. Hence even at that early date (two thousand 
years B.C.) there may have been authentic legends of 
the Deluge current among the nations. Chaldean and 
Iranian history proves this. Divested of rhetorical and 
poetic fancies, the underlying facts of the record cannot 
be doubted. They illustrate the truth of God^s ever- 
lasting word. They corroborate the essential features 
of the narrative in Genesis. 

The three chief elements of Noah's Deluge are Divine 
Agency, forewarning of the catastrophe, and the after- 
sacrifice by the survivors. These we find in history, 
sacred and secular. First in time and in detail we 
have the legend of early Babylonia, or the Hamitic ver- 
sion, which nearly agrees with the Hebrew, which was 
later, unless derived from Abraham, and so contempo- 
raneous. It contains mention of the Divine Agent, the 

warning, and the after sacrifice. Thus : I will destroy 
the sinner (Lenormant reads substance) and life, said 
the God Ea to the son of IJbaratutu. Make thee a 
vessel after this fashion, and cause to enter all the seed 
of life, that thou mayest preserve them. Six hundred 
cubits shall be the length of it, and sixty cubits the 
breadth, and sixty the height thereof.. Sirippakite 
answered, My Lord, that which Thou commandest, I 
will perform ; though old and young deride me, it shall 
be done. Ea spake and said, If any laugh, punished 
they shall be. The protection of God is over thee. At 
the given moment close the door. I will judge the high 
and the low. Then when the ship was builded and 
made ready, the family of the favored man, with all 



102 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

that appertained to them, entered ; also birds of every 
kind, animals, tamed and untamed, men and women 
servants, and the sons of Khasisatra's people, the cat- 
tle and the wild beasts of the field, with grain, pro- 
visions, furniture, treasures ; these were kept within 
the door of the ship. It was closed to all others. Then 
it rained abundantly from heaven ; the sky god thun- 
dered in the midst of the clouds ; Nabon and Sharru 
marched before, devastating the mountain and the 
plain. Nergal, the powerful god of war and death, 
dragged chastisements after him. Adar advanced, 
overthrowing all before him ; the Archangels wrought 
destruction. Terribly they agitated the earth. The 
flood rose up to the sky, and the earth was changed to 
a desert of waters. The lidng creatures were destroyed. 
Brother no longer saw his brother ; men no longer knew 
each other. The gods in terror sought refuge in the 
heaven of Anu. Istar wailed like a child : Humanity 
is returned into mud ! Like fishes they are filling the 
sea ! So it was declared in the presence of the gods. 
On their seats they were seated in tears. Weep with 
Istar ! For six days and as many nights the wind, the 
water- spout, and the diluvian rain raged in all their 
force. On the seventh day it grew weaker, grew calm, 
and the sea began to dry. Khasisatra looked out, and 
saw the whole of humanity had returned to mud ; like 
sea-weeds the corpses floated. He opened the window, 
and the light smote on his face. He was seized with 
sadness ; he sat down and wept ; the tears rolled down 
his face. The vessel was borne to the land of Nizir ; it 
floated above the mountain of Nizir for six days, and 
on the seventh day it rested. Khasisatra sent forth a 
dove ; it went about and returned. He then sent forth 
a swallow ; it went about, but found no place to light 
on, and returned. Last, he sent out a raven ; the raven 
saw the corpses on the water ; it ate, rested, and came 
not back. Khasisatra offered sacrifice ... a burnt- 
offering on the peak of the mountain. By sevens he 
disposed the measured vases, which Lenormant says re- 
lates to ritualistic details of sacrifice. And the gods 
assembled above the master of the sacrifice. Anu and 



\ 



DELUGE LEGENDS. 103 

the great goddess approached. The gods prayed that I 
might never leave them ; I, Khasisatra, prayed that I 
might never leave them. Let the gods come to my sac- 
rificial pile. But never may Bel come, for he made the 
Deluge, and numbered men for the pit (of destruction). 
He sought that no one should leave the vessel alive. 
Then is related the parley between Ea, Adar, and Bel : 
'/ Let the sinner carry the weight of his sins, the blas- 
phemer the weight of his blasphemy ; but never again 
shall the Deluge come. [I condense the legend.] In- 
stead thereof let lions, let hyenas, let famine, let pesti- 
lence, severally reduce, destroy, and devastate mankind. 
So Khasisatra interpreted and understood what the gods 
had determined. Then, when his destructive resolve 
was arrested, Bel entered the vessel. He took my hand 
and made me to rise ; he made my wife rise and stand 
by my side. He turned around us and stopped short, 
saying : Until now, Khasisatra has made a part of per- 
ishable humanity ; but, lo ! Khasisatra and his wife are 
going to be carried away to live like the gods ! And 
they were taken to a remote place at the mouth of the 
rivers.'' Observe this early addition of the polytheistic 

narrator. Noah is not deified exactly, but taken away 
without dying to live with the gods. The translation 
of Enoch is here ascribed to Noah. The date of the 
legend is some centuries after the Flood, which may eas- 
ily account for such additions. Then the swallow is not 
in our Genesis ; the time of the flood is very much les- 
sened ; one full week for the downpour of the water- 
spout, and one full week for the drying up of the 
waters ; whereas in Genesis the time of each is one hun- 
dred and fifty days ; the waters rose fifteen cubits high 
toward heaven, to insure complet-e destruction, and they 
were one hundred and fifty days in subsiding, quite a 
reasonable allowance of time. Forty days longer Noah 
remained in the Ark before sending forth a raven ; then 
he sent out the dove which returned; and after seven 
days he again sent forth the dove which returned with 



104 DELUGE LEGENDS. 

an olive leaf. After another seven days lie sent out the 
dove which did not return, for the waters were abated 
from off the earth. Some days more may have passed 
between the raven and the first dove and between the 
non-returning dove and the going forth from the Ark ; 
in all, according to Ewald and Lenormant, a solar year 
of three hundred and sixty-five days. See Genesis 7 : 
6 ; 8 : 13-21. As elsewhere remarked, the Chaldean 
account gives a polytheistic coloring, a plurality of gods, 
and even a difference in their names. Thus this legend 
at the outset makes the God Ea the Agent, but at its 
close he is named Bel ; again illustrating what I be- 
lieve to be true — viz., that the same name was applied to 
different ideas of God, and also different names were 
applied to the same Deity. The writers were polynom- 
ynous as well as polytheistic in their designations of 
Deity. But this legend belongs to the era of Abraham. 
The worship and the sacrifice are explicit elements of 
it. It was upon leaving the Ark, centuries before an 
acknowledged hero or the appearance of any ghost, be- 
fore a grave mound, and before a temple of saved man- 
kind. The historic fact is in direct opposition to the 
theory of the evolution of religion. But those who make 
the theory cannot set aside the legend of the Deluge in 
Chaldea or in Palestine, nor the early worship and sac- 
rifice of the saved man to the God who had saved him. 
Some differences in detail there may be, and under the 
circumstances there should be. Thus as to the dura- 
tion of the Flood and the dimensions of the Ark : in 
Genesis the length was to be three hundred cubits, the 
breadth fifty cubits, and the height thirty cubits, while 
in Chaldea the length was six hundred cubits, the 
breadth and height sixty cubits respectively. The 
greater size of the vessel and the shorter time for the 



DELUGE LEGENDS. 105 

catastrophe heightened in imagination the marvel of 

both. But inspiration guided the hand of the writer 

to give a true version of each particular named Truly 

may we exclaim, God's Word is from everlasting ! 

Such is the Accadian, Chaldean, or Hamitic narrative 

as compared with the Semitic account in our Bibles. 

Let us now glance at the Japhite or Aryan legends of 

the same event. Here the name of the saved chief is 

called Deucalion, who, because of his virtue and piety, 

was alone saved to become the father of a new race. The 

method is briefly described, and that Zeus inspired 

those admitted into the great coffer to amity and kind- 
ness, so that they did not devour one another while shut 
up in the float as long as the waters remained in force. 
The destroyed race are said to have been full of inso- 
lence and pride (compare Milton's description), commit- 
ting many crimes, disregarding oaths, inhospitable, de- 
void of mercy and pity. Wherefore they were terribly 
punished. Suddenly enormous volumes of water issued 
from the earth, rains fell in torrents, rivers overflowed 
their beds, and the sea its shores. The whole earth 
was covered with waters, and all men perished. Of 
course this is a repetition of the Chaldean and Hebrew 

account, though voiced in different words. Already we 

see the Divine Agent and the saved man. And we find 

the religious sacrifice : The people of Hierapolis tell of 
the marvellous opening of a great chasm in their coun- 
try, into which all the waters of the Deluge poured. 
Then Deucalion raised an altar and dedicated a temple 
to Hera near that chasm. Arabians and Syrians bring 
water even from the sea with which to celebrate re- 
ligious rites there. Thus was added a religious memo- 
rial of the event. The legend of the Koran says the 
waters of the Deluge were absorbed into the earth. 
Ewald states that " the Flood or washing period has a 
notice in the Vedas, as has been clearly shown by 
K. Eoth and by Albert Weber in his ' Indian Studies.' '' 

Burnouf, Wilson, Max Miiller, and Lenormant recount 
5* 



106 DELUGE LEGENDS. 

the Indian legends, which are common alike to Brah- 
mans and to Buddhists, but which may have been a 
Semitic importation within historic times and through 
Babylonian sources. Mliller indeed laughs at the fish 
part of the legend, in seeming ignorance of Assyrian and 
Babylonian traditions, and that one of their gods was of 
ichthyomorphic form, combining part fish and part man. 
Some at first thought this representation was in memory 
of the Prophet Jonah and of his visit to Nineveh. There 
may have been truth in both ideas : the Fish-god had 
saved mankind. Heaven would again save all who 
obeyed the Divine will from flood and flame, from pesti- 
lence and famine, whether on the Indus, the Tigris, or 
the Euphrates. The Hindus had such commercial 
relations and intercourse with their Western neighbors 
as might induce them to adopt and then to embellish 
their Flood legends. 

Thus they tell how a fish spoke to Manu and asked 
for his protection, and then in turn this fish would save 
Manu from a coming Deluge, which would sweep all 
living creatures away to death. Keep me, said the fish, 
first in a vase, and when I become too large for it put 
me in a basin or pool, and when I have still larger grown 
throw me into the sea ; so shall I be preserved from be- 
ing eaten by other fishes. Soon it grew to be a fish of 
large size. Then it said to Manu, This very year, now 
that I have attained my full growth, the Deluge will 
happen. Build thee a vessel and worship me. When 
the waters rise enter the vessel and I will save thee. So 
it came to pass. The fish grew, Manu carried it to the 
sea ; he also built a vessel and worshipped the fish.. The 
Deluge came, and he entered the vessel. Then the fish 
came swimming up to him, and Manu fastened his cable 
to tlie horn of the fish ; so he was guided safely over 



DELUGE LEGENDS, 107 

the mountains, and when the waters subsided the vessel 
was fastened to a tree. But the deluge had destroyed 
all other (land) creatures, and Manu alone remained. 
Here we have the Fish-god, the warning, the worship, 
and the saved man. Such is Aryan India. Max Mtil- 
ler and some others fail to see the essential elements of 
the original legend in this version. Well, there is no 
accounting for the caprices of learned men. How shall 
we account for this : The Iranians, in their Zoroastrian 
books, tell us how Ahuramazda, the good deity, warned 
mankind that the earth was about to be devastated by 
a flood. Yima built a high wall-fence around a large 
garden, and thus became the saviour of all who sought 
refuge within his provided inclosure. A bird carried 
the saving message to him and them. The usual item 
about sacrifice and worship is omitted here, but it is 
implied in the Divine message and the obedient man. 
Another Aryan legend, in addition to that of Deucalion, 
was connected with the name of Ogyges in Boeotia or 
Attica. The name itself is said to mean deluge in Aryan 
speech, and that in the days of Ogyges the whole land 
was covered by a flood, whose waters reached to the sky. 
Ogyges and some of his companions were saved in a ves- 
sel. Be this as it may, the memory of Deucalion's 
Deluge was long preserved in Greece by religious rites 
similar to those celebrated at Hierapolis in Syria. Near 
by the temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure was shown 
of about a cubit in length (!) through which the Deluge 
waters were said to have escaped. 

Still another flood is reported to have occurred in the 
time of Dardanos in Arcadia, which some place before 
that of Deucalion by two hundred and fifty to six hun- 
dred years. The Samothracians hold that their Deluge 
was the earliest. But these variations of detail do not 



108 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

affect our main question — viz., tlie historic fact. Divine 
agency in it, sin the cause, and worship of God by the 
saved man immediately following it. Pagan priests in 
Phrygia had certain coins made, which represented an 
open ark, in which Noah and his wife are seen in the 
act of receiving the dove returning with an olive branch 
in its mouth : while on the Ark was inscribed the name 
Noe, the same form of the word given in the Septuagint. 
Even the bards of Wales sung of this catastrophe, or 
rather of three such which were said to have occurred in 
Britain, and which destroyed mankind, except Dwyfan 
and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel and re- 
peopled the island. " We cannot doubt," says Pictet, 
** that the Cymri had native traditions of the Deluge." 
Some indeed trace this legend to the Scandinavians, 
who make the blood of the slain Ymir to drown all the 
giants but one, Bergelmir, who saved his wife and him- 
self in a boat, and thereafter became the parents of a 
new race of mankind. Such variations do not disprove 
the original, but enable us, as Pictet suggests, to trace 
them up to a common source. 

Max Mailer, in '' What Can India Teach Us?" says 
there are "^ a million and a half of Lithuanians in Europe 
who speak a language containing grammatical forms al- 
most identical with Sanskrit.'^ They were among the 
last of Europeans who became Christians, and so did 
not adopt their traditions. Yet according to Lenor- 
mant, these Lithuanians have a legend of the Deluge, the 
groundwork of which appears very ancient. Whether 
borrowed originally from Genesis or from Iranians, it 
has assumed a very pagan and popular character, mak- 
ing the God Pramzimrasto send two giants to lay waste 
the whole earth, because it was full of iniquity ! Only 
a few men escaped, by flying to a mountain, from the 



DELUGE LEGENDS, 109 

fury of these giants. Pramzimras, while eating celestial 
walnuts, dropped a shell near the mountain ; in this 
shell the fugitives found refuge and were saved. After- 
ward the god sent his rainbow to console them in their 
childless condition, and bade them jump " on the bones 
of the earth.'' They jumped nine times, and nine 
pairs of children sprang forth ; these became the an- 
cestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes. The legend curi- 
ously reminds us of the oracle of Deucalion. It only 
wants the item of sacrifice to identify it with the legend 
of Chaldea ; and it has the rainbow of Noah. Thus we 
find the widely separated descendants of Shem, Ham, 
and Japheth testifying explicitly in confirmation of 
the fact and essential details of the Noachian Deluge. 
We may now add the testimony of Egypt as cumula- 
tive evidence on the Hamitic part of the question, lest 
the testimony of ancient Accadians and Erechians 
should not be enough from this ethnic stock. It is re- 
corded in a chapter of the sacred books of Thoth and 
graven on the sides of the innermost funeral chamber 
of Seti I. at Thebes. It belongs to a period nearly two 
centuries before the Exodus, and so could not have re- 
ceived any Noachian coloring from Moses. Translated 
by M. Naville, in " Eecords of the Past,'' it reads thus 
(condensed) : Said Ea to Nun, Those born of myself 
speak words against me ; lo ! I have waited, and have 
not slain before hearing your report. What wooild you 
do in the matter? Lo ! they take to flight through the 
country, and their hearts are afraid. Said by the gods : 
Let thy face permit, and let those men be slain, thy 
enemies, who plot evil things, let none of them remain. 
The goddess of destruction left the company, and slew 
men upon earth. She returned when her heart was sat- 
isfied, and was welcomed back by Ea, who said He would 



110 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

complete their ruin. And lo ! Sekhet during several 
nights trod their blood under foot. When the anger of 
Ra was appeased, the massacre ended, and a great ex- 
piatory sacrifice conciliated Him. The juice of Egyptian 
fruits filling seven thousand pitchers and mingled with 
human blood was presented to the God. He was pleased 
with the offering. Said Ka, This is well ; I will protect 
men because of it. I raise my hand concerning this, to 
say that I will no more destroy men. He commanded to 
overthrow the liquid in the vases, and the fields were 
wholly filled thereby. Upon her arrival the goddess 
found the fields full of water. She rejoiced, drank abun- 
dantly, and went away satisfied. She no more perceived 
any men. Ra bade her a gracious welcome, and caused 
young priestesses to be born. Libations were instituted 
to Hathor under their direction by all men since those 
ancient times. Thus arose the practice. Some men 
escaped the destruction commanded by Ra, and pre- 
served the population of the world. Here Ra, Hathor, 
and Sekhet represent the destructive forces, or the Di- 
vine punishment of sin, while other parts of the legend 
may suggest a Chaldean origin. After the destruction 
there was offered an expiatory sacrifice, a solemn cove- 
nant made between men and the deity, who promised 
with hand upraised not again to destroy them. Lenor- 
mant suggests the correspondence of Ra in Egypt with 
Bel in Ohaldea, and that the form of the tradition was 
changed as to the water part, the overflowing Nile being 
a source of blessing to the Egyptians, to the slaughter 
of men by the gods. The legend is complete in its main 
features. It agrees with that of Uruk, the Erech of 
Genesis, which, like Accad, was founded by Nimrod, a 
grandson of Ham. The Hebrew and Assyrian account 
is Semitic, while that of Iranians, Hindus, Greeks, 



X 



DELUGE LEGENDS. Ill 

Britons, Phrygians, and Scandinavians— all cousins and 
descendants from Japheth — is derived from an eye- 
witness who was saved from the Deluge. More than this 
we do not need to establish any truth of history, an- 
cient or modern. As well claim the sun to be only a 
myth as that all the representative branches of the 
human family have erred in the grand fact of a cataclysm 
having occurred in the early ages of our world. It was 
written with pen and chisel upon the records of man- 
kind, and by the throes of nature in the bowels of the 
earth. But in the Inspired narrative there is no de- 
scription of death agonies ; no wailing of drowning men 
and women ; no sighs of despair ; no heartrending cry 
of wives and husbands, parents and children ; not a 
single shriek is heard at the approach of the rising 
waters ; all this, despite its impressive effect on the 
reader, is ignored and left to the imagination for por- 
traiture. Neither Noah nor Moses plays the clown or 
the rhetorician. The record is grand in its simplicity 
— a simplicity which is guarantee of truthfulness. 

There is no need of interrogating the Chinese, the 
Sibylline oracles, our southern neighbors, the Mexicans 
and Peruvians, our native Indians, the Australians, 
Malagasy, Samoan or Bongo ; for if they all bore united 
testimony to a world-wide deluge, it would not be proof 
of the Deluge of Noah, since it remains to be proven 
through whom they trace their descent from Noah ! The 
Biblical account demands him and his sons as witnesses 
of that occurrence. If, therefore, we have their con- 
temporaneous testimony, who witnessed the event — and 
we have considered it in its threefold character, from 
Hamitic, Semitic, and Japhite sources — then not all the 
other history and science of this world can reasonably 
object to our conclusion, which is the verdict of triune 



112 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

humanity, that the hand of God and His voice of warn- 
ing did attend upon a deluged world of men, and that 
the saved man did worship God and sacrifice to Him 
immediately upon his deliverance. Such is the testi- 
mony of the Bible and of ancient legends. No later 
testimony or modern guesses can set it aside. 

TESTIMONY OF TACITUS. 

We may now pass over two thousand years, and turn- 
ing back to page 13.4, see what is there said of the Gauls 
and Britons by Cassar, in order the better to understand 
the remarks of Tacitus, who wrote about one hundred 
and fifty years later. Caesar (1. vi. cap. 21) says of the 
Germans that " they have no Druids who preside over 
the divine offices nor attend to the sacrifices. They 
regard those alone among the number of the Gods whom 
they can comprehend, and by whose operations they are 
evidently benefited : The Sun, Vulcan, or Fire, and the 
Moon. The rest (of our Pantheon) they accept only by 
report.'^ In other words, he represents the Germans as 
Sabaeans in a limited sense. Beyond the Khine the Gods 
were few in names, and may easily be reduced in number 
from the three mentioned by Caesar to One ; for the Sun 
and Vulcan, or Fire, are primarily one essence, one ele- 
ment ; while the Moon is precisely that for the night 
which the Sun is for the day — the great Benefactor and 
Hluminator. Hence the essential Unity of Deity was 
the belief of the ancient Germans. They had no Druids 
or priests, and no temples of worship, yet they had 
heroes and brave men who worshipped God. But in the 
evolutions of the next century, according to Tacitus, 
they had enlarged their pantheon and added to the 
number of their gods. He says in '* De Moribus 
Germaniae,^^ 7-9., that '^ in the reign of Vespasian, 



DELUGE LEGENDS, 113 

Yeleda for a time enjoyed the position of a divinity ; 
but formerly Aurania and many others were honored, 
but not with worship, nor as if transformed into god- 
desses. Of the (Roman) gods they mostly worshipped 
Mercury, whom at certain times they thought it proper 
to propitiate with human victims. Hercules and Mars 
they appeased with ordinary sacrifices ; a part of the 
Suevi sacrificed to Isis." Here were a robust people on 
the borders of Eoman civilization, who in a single cen- 
t ury developed four new gods. They prove our posi- 
tion, that the first is simple, the complex of a later time. 
First they worshipped God, or what stood to them for 
God. But I am willing to suppose that Tacitus gave 
the Roman names of gods to those adored by the Ger- 
mans. Still the process of development is not in the 
line of Agnosticism, but the opposite. The Egyptian 
Isis was certainly not known to the Germans in those 
ages. For fifteen hundred years they had not crossed 
the path of the Egyptians. As to the difference between 
Caesar and Tacitus, it is their concern ; but if we render 
" ne fama'' et al. by '^ only in name do they acknowl- 
edge the rest'' (of our pantheon), it may lessen it or tend 
to reconcile these famous Romans. Tacitus may have 
given names to gods suggested by the "^ reliquios'- of 
Caesar. But this does not explain chapter 7 of the 
Germaniae, that certain things were done only when per- 
mitted by the priests, ** nisi sacerdotibus permissum,'' 
who were to the Germans what the Druids were to Gauls 
and Britons. Yet Caesar says they had no Druids — ie., 
no religious order. Again Tacitus says the Germans 
believed the gods were present when they were waging 
war, so they carried into battle certain pictures and 
standards, taken from the sanctuaries. These were an 
especial incentive to valor ; not emblems of the Deity 



114 DELUGE LEGENDS. 

in human form, nor in that of the lower animals ; but 
the pictures or heads of wild beasts, carried into battle 
in order to incite their ferocity ; heads of wild animals 
in pictures and on banners ; compare c. 9 of the Ger. ; 
iv. 22 of the His. ; 1. c. 51 of the Ann. 

That the Germans had sacred places, woods and groves 
to which they gave the names of the deity whom they 
located there, but whom they beheld with the eye of 
adoration alone — a secret Power not enclosed within 
walls — is shown bv the Ann. 1. c. 51, where we read that 
even the temple of Tanfana, the most celebrated in tliis 
nation, and other sacred places, were levelled with the 
ground. A consecrated grove, or any sacred place, was 
called templum by the Romans. And the priest of the 
canton led the invocation of the gods. In the Ger- 
mania, c. 9, Tacitus says : The gods are not supposed to 
be confined within the walls of a house, nor do they in 
any manner resemble the faces of men ; from their im- 
mensity they are believed to be in the heavens : they 
consecrated certain places and groves (hicos ac nemora) ; 
these solitudes, or sanctuaries, they called by divine 
names, and approached them with due reverence. In 
c. 10 he says the priests of the State {civitatis) besought 
the gods on public occasions, and interpreted the signs 
and appearances of the heavens. This certainly seems 
to be a different account from Caesar's. Could such an 
evolution of religious usages take place within a cen- 
tury ? If Tacitus attributed those names to the deity 
worshipped by the Germans, which correspond to those 
of the Romans, does he not also follow the same method 
when a sacerdotal functionary seems to be required? 
But this affects his veracity as a historian, and Tacitus 
stands high for historical correctness. In any case, his 
portraiture makes against ecclesiastical institutions. 



DELUGE LEGENDS. 115 

Caesar found no religious order among the Germans, 
Tacitus did, and made them priests of the cantons, in- 
spectors of the auspices which should decide on peace 
and war. Yet in all this not a sign of hero-worship is 
to be seen, except that heroes were their leaders in bat- 
tle, chosen for their valor {Duces ex vertute sumunt, c. 
7). They did not become gods ; neither was the power 
of their kings large or unrestrained. Deification was 
unknown among them. 

Nor will it be more favorable for modern theorists, if 
we look at the usages of Scandinavians and Norsemen. 
Whatever their ethnic origin, they did not begin with 
the worship of God under Eoman or Egyptian names. 
For many centuries they had no commercial or hostile 
dealings with them. Old Germans and Scandinavians 
held simple ideas of the Godhead, and they believed in 
a future life. The position of women among the Ger- 
mans was more like that of Mrs. J. S. Mill in the esti- 
mation of her husband, than that of the women of Kome 
in the days of Tacitus. Cousins they were ethnologi- 
cally, but in other respects Eomans and Germans largely 
differed. Professor Boyesen makes them of the same 
race origin as the Scandinavians and other Aryans. 
What the Germans originally believed and practised 
touching God and His worship, we learn from Csesar 
and Tacitus. Very similar was the theology of the old 
Northmen, as we may infer from their version of the 
Deluge. They indeed recognized the forces of nature, 
the hail-cloud and wind-cloud, and the thunderstorm. 
Winter's ice and summer's harvest came from God, to 
Whom he prayed, and Whom he worshipped, but kept 
his armor ready, and largely trusted to it and his own 
strong arm. Jotansorno, there was rough work for the 
Scandinavian to do in this world, and he did it. It 



116 DELUGE LEGENDS. 

was not in him to fear any ghost, or pray to departed 
spirits that they would not hurt him ! Eather, if any 
ghost stood in his way he would measure lances with 
him, and see who was the stronger. Carlyle in his 
'' Hero-worship'' well says that the genuine Thought of 
deep, rude, earnest minds was fairly opened in the 
Norseman to the things about him ; indeed, life with him 
was a face-to-face and heart-to-heart matter. He had 
true and rustic strength ; great sincerity discloses itself 
in him. Large gianthood characterizes the Norse sys- 
tem. It had untamed thought, but great compactness 
and godlike strength. Spiritually as well as bodily those 
men were our progenitors, from whom are the Shake- 
speares and the Goethes. Such heroes could not be in 
terror about the dead. There was no sincerity in spec- 
tres. With all its harshness, it would repay ecclesiastical 
evolutionists to master that first lecture of Carlyle's on 
the Hero as a Divinity. We all need more of the giant- 
hood of sincerity. Old Norsemen built no temples for 
the (rod they worshipped, nor to Loki, the devil tjiey 
feared. But they saw God's power in Nature, and be- 
held with wonder and adoration. Professor A. Vambrery 
says the first Huns were the descendants of Nimrod — 
not Turanians — and they worshipped one Supreme Being 
called Isten ; but lesser deities came to be acknowledged 
who represented the powers of Nature ; for the Huns 
borrowed from the nations through which they passed 
many novel features of the religious life of those coun- 
tries ; from Parsees, Khazars, Ugrians. But this is not 
opposed to what is said of Nimrod and the Tartars in 
chapter 1 of this series, and the author had not then Seen 
''The Story of the Huns.'' At first the Huns wor- 
shipped One Supreme Being — were not polytheists. 
Of the Etruscans our information is too scant to know 



BEL TJQE LEGENDS, 117 

what were their early ideas of God and His worship, but 
they were most probably of the Japhetic stock, and so 
had thie religious ideas common to early Aryans. Ko- 
mans proper were another branch of the Aryan families. 
Lactantius, called the Christian Cicero, fancifully ac- 
counts for the adoption of false religion, ^' because that 
Ham, when disowned and exiled by his father, settled in 
Arabia ; his posterity were Canaanites, ignorant of God, 
because their prince and founder did not receive from 
his father the true worship of God, being, in fact, 
under the ban ; hence his descendants were ignorant of 
the Divine character (Inst., Book 2, c. 14 ; and in 
Book 1, c. 5). He cites the testimony of poets and 
philosophers ; that Orpheus, an ancient poet, speaks of 
the true and great God as the firstborn, from Whom all 
things sprung, and was the Parent of all gods ; that 
Marco, the first Latin poet, speaks of the highest God, 

** Mind and Spirit, Who nourished heaven and earth ; the main, 
The Moon's pale orb, and all the starry train ; 
A Spirit whose celestial flame 
Glows in each member of the frame, 
And stirs the mighty whole." 

Ovid also, he says, admits the universe was arranged 
by God, Whom he calls the Framer of the world, the 
Artificer of all things. Among Theists he reckons 
Thales and Pythagoras, Anaxoras and Clean thes, Chry- 
sippus and Zeno, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca. 
To this I may add the testimony of Xenophon : '' It is 
believed that the gods have been worshipped by all men 
from the very beginning." Now, if this means any- 
thing as to belief in God and the practice of His wor- 
ship, it means that, four hundred years before our era, 
a truthful writer like Xenophon, touching matters 



118 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

within his knowledge, could make such a declaration. 
He and those whom he knew so believed and worshipped, 
and *^ all men had done this from the beginning." 
Neither Greeks nor Komans worshipped ghosts. 

What, then, did deification among the Eomans mean ? 
It meant that some Eomans paid special honor to their 
Benefactors, great heroes, and deliverers from national 
peril, and it meant much more in the case of Eomulus 
and Caesar than when incense was offered to the statues 
of a Caligula or a Nero. But it had little meaning even 
then. What worship was ever paid to the elder Cato, 
to Numa, to Scipio? What could deification mean 
with Tiberius, even, who for more than twenty years 
held the imperial sceptre ? He was one of the most 
firmly seated of emperors, yet, according to Tertullian, he 
made a proposal to the Eoman Senate during the last 
seven years of his reign, which they refused to adopt. 
Yet it was one which the new theory of ecclesiastical 
development would naturally suggest. Tacitus indeed 
omits to record what was not done as a legislative act ; 
no secular historian records it. Why should he ? why 
make history of a proposal not adopted? He properly 
narrates the fact that Christ was put to death by Pon- 
tius Pilate, while Tiberius was emperor (Annals, xv. 44). 
Plato and Xenophon tell us that Socrates was unjustly 
put to death by vote of Athenians ; and in the Eepublic 
we read, *'that the perfectly simple and noble man, 
clothed only in his justice, will suffer the worst conse- 
quences for being what in reality he is not — viz., unjust. 
He will be put in chains, scourged, tortured, and at 
last be impaled, crucified!'' Plato himself had some 
experience of this at the court of Dionysius in Sicily. 
But neither he nor Socrates w^as ever deified by their 
countrjmen. Why then should Jesus of Nazareth be 



DELUGE LEGENDS, 119 

deified? Well, the proposition of Tiberius, that He 
should be enrolled among the gods, which was said to 
be rejected by the Senate, rests upon the testimony of 
the famous Tertullian, repeated by Eusebius and others 
after him. Gibbon sneers at it as being too much to be 
believed, while others are puzzled and uncertain. 

Why not believe Tertullian ? Though born in 
Africa, he received a liberal education, and was well 
versed in Greek and Eoman literature, Roman law and 
history. He was clearly competent to record a fact or 
a gossip which belonged to the century before his birth. 
That he should create such a myth does not accord with 
his character as a purist in religion of the rigid school 
as to discipline. Madman in many respects as Tiberius 
had become, the proposal was not unsuited to his char- 
acter during the last seven jears of his life. Witness 
how he tried to deceive even the court physician who 
felt his pulse ! So he may have thought this an easy 
way of appeasing the turbulent Jews, not distinguish- 
ing any more than Tacitus did the difference between 
the Christians of Palestine and the political fanatics 
who disturbed the peace of the country and menaced 
the empire. 

Moreover, Tertullian aMressed his Apology to the 
Eomans, and bade them consult their histories and learn 
what pertained to Christianity for themselves. It is 
language which a falsifier of legends would hardly use. 
In the Apology, c. 5 and c. 21, he says : '' Tiberius, 
having received intelligence from Palestine of an event 
which had clearly shown the truth of Chrisfs divinity, 
brought the matter before the Senate, with his own de- 
cision in favor of Christ ; but because the proposal had 
not been formally voted upon in the usual way the Sen- 
ate rejected it." Again, c. 21, '^ Pilate sent word to 



120 DELUGE LEGENDS, 

the reigning emperor respecting the death of Christ, 
His resurrection/' etc. Again: ^^ We worship God 
through Christ. He revealed the Deity.'' Eusebius 
says : *' Our Lord was believed to be a God by the great 
mass of the people. Tiberius referred the matter to the 
Senate, for the law required that no one should be 
ranked as a God unless by a vote and decree of the Sen- 
ate" (His. Eccles. 2, 2). The rejection of the pro- 
posal suflBlciently accounts for the absence of an official 
record in Eoman history, though the proposal may have 
become legend the following century. The legend itself 
shows how little value such deification could have in the 
minds of pagans : An unknown Hebrew (at that time) 
in a remote province of the Empire to be placed among 
the gods of Eome ! This is an evolution of religion 
which was not expected. Long ago it had been de- 
clared that One should arise out of Judea Who should 
possess the earth. Even so it has come to pass. The 
One Saviour and Benefactor of Mankind — rejected by a 
Senate of Eome — has been acknowledged as Lord of 
lords and King of kings. He was predicted by the 
prophets, heralded by angels, crucified by men, received 
up into glory. He was the Eirst and the Last in the 
true system of Divine Evolution. Promised to Eve, seen 
in Abel's sacrifice and Enoch's holy walk. He reappears 
in the covenant with Noah and his sacrifice ; in Abra- 
ham and the renewed covenant ; in Moses and the Daily 
Sacrifice ; in many warning prophets, and in the arms 
of the aged Simeon, who blessed God for the precious 
sight. And He died to make atonement for the sin of 
the world. Surely if Socrates died like a sage, Jesus 
Christ lived and died like a God ! The logic of history 
says, Tahe Him for your God. 



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